Newly-elected Senator Sherwin Gatchalian promised to re-file a measure that aims for the return of the Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) in tertiary-level schools amid the country’s territorial conflict with China.
In an interview on News To Go, he urged President-elect Rodrigo Duterte to make it a priority measure.
“With President Duterte’s endorsement of our proposed ROTC bill as a priority measure, the measure would immediately be taken up in the 17th Congress to ensure its swift passage given our ongoing territorial dispute with China,” Gatchalian, who was Valenzuela representative before he ran for Senator, said.
“It teaches discipline and nationalism… Dapat lahat tayo aware na puwedeng mangyaring lusubin tayo o ano pa man,” the lawmaker, who himself has signed up for the AFP Reserve Force last year, said in the same interview.
According to Gatchalian, the ranks of reserved officers has dwindled to about 150,000 in 2011 from 800,000 before 2001.
Training students to become part of the reserve force has been optional in schools since the Philippine Congress scrapped the mandatory basic ROTC in 2002.
For Gatchalian, “The revival of the ROTC would help drive the point that although we are a small nation in economic and military terms, we will never back down from our fight for sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea.”
“It is worthy of note that prior to its being an optional requirement of the National Service Training Program (NSTP), the ROTC constituted roughly about 75 percent of the AFP officer corps, and has been the breeding ground for prominent graduates who became the country’s AFP chiefs-of-staff,” he said.
