DAVAO CITY — The Boy Scout of the Philippines (BSP) are planning to propose to President Rodrigo Duterte to abolish the membership fee in the agency for the new and upcoming recruits of Boy Scouts.
Dominador Lopez, executive director of BSP in the region said that the local council planned to write a letter to President Duterte to have free membership for interested Boy Scout applicants.
“Ngayon kasi ang mga bata, P50 na membership fee per year hindi maka-afford kaya nakaka-awa talaga (Children nowadays can’t afford to pay the P50 membership fee, it’s pitifull),” he said.
Lopez added that he will also include in the letter their needed support of the Department of Education (DepEd) to allow Boy Scout membership to be made mandatory in schools.
“Magpunta kami sa mga eskwelahan, iilan lang yung nakalinya mas marami pa nga sa likod kasi walang uniform o wala lahat, hindi sila makasama sa scouting because hindi sila nakakabayad (When we go to different schools here, there are only few who joined the Boy Scout some of them are just in the back with an incomplete uniform or no uniform at all. They can’t join the Boy scout because they didn’t pay for the membership fee),” Lopez said.
He said he hoped Duterte will grant their request since the education of the students in public schools are free “then with more reason on scouting, it should be free also.”
As of now, Lopez said that there are 93,000 Boy Scouts in Davao Region, which is a very small number compared to the population of children.
Lopez said that the advantages of being a boy scout is “the training and their formations.”
“Children nowadays don’t know how to cook or wash their clothes so during their training in Kawan through Boy Scouts they will be required to cook their own food with supervision of the teacher assigned,” he said.
He said that children in the Grade 1 level can join the Boy Scout. Students who are in Grade 1 to Grade 3 are called “Kawan”, while Grade 4 to Grade 6 are called Boy Scouts, Lopez said.
Lopez said that he would like to clarify that they allow students to join boy scouts even without a uniform.
“We consider (those who have no uniforms) as long as they pay the membership fee, they can wear type B or type C uniforms,” Lopez said.
He said that the type B uniform of the Boy scouts consist of white t-shirt, scout neckerchief while type C uniform consist of neckerchief only.
“We would like everybody to join the scouting, all male children should join,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lopez announced that BSP here will celebrate its 51st founding anniversary on July 20-23.
Lopez said that on July 20-22 their will be series of activities such as chorale and oral presentation which will be held at the Kapitan Tomas Elementary School.
He said that the culmination day will be on July 23 at Rizal park.
As for the highlight of the activity, Lopez said that there is a possibility that President Duterte will join the celebration.
“There was already a message from Manila that President Duterte will accept and their will be a donning with his neckerchief as the chief scout,” he said
Lopez said that based from Commonwealth Act of 111, as the new President of the Philippines, President Duterte is automatically the chief scout of BSP. (davaotoday.com)
