THE Armed Forces has reactivated the office of the deputy
chief of staff for education and training, citing the need to re-focus attention
on both internal and external training of its men.
AFP deputy chief of staff Lt. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang revived
the office, which had been abolished three years ago, on Thursday in rites held
at Camp Aguinaldo. Col. William Turalde was named officer-in-charge of the
office pending the appointment of a permanent head.
"We are just giving focus and importance to training. We now
have a lot of international engagements with regards to training and we just
want to give attention to it, so we reactivated the office," Maclang said in a
phone interview yesterday.
The said office was abolished by the military leadership
during a reorganization prompted by corruption charges against former AFP deputy
chief of staff for comptrollership Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia. (Garcia was charged
and subsequently discharged by a military court for violation of military laws.
He is still facing a plunder charge for allegedly amassing millions of pesos
illegally.)
Also abolished in that reorganization were the offices of the
AFP deputy chiefs of staff for comptrollership, civil military operations, and
capability and materiel development, but civil military operations was
reactivated about year later during the time of AFP chief Hermogenes Esperon Jr.
Maclang said it was Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.
who ordered a study conducted on the reactivation of the education and training
office. He said that while the responsibilities of education and training were
given over to the operations office, there had been an increase in training
engagements, including with American forces and possibly with Australian troops.
A Status of Visiting Forces Agreement with Australia is still awaiting
concurrence by the Senate but once this is obtained, the AFP will also be
playing war games with Australian soldiers as it has been doing with US forces
in the past decades. These RP-US training exercises, including the Balikatan war
games, are sanctioned by the Mutual Defense Board. The Americans also have an
ongoing program in Mindanao to help Filipino troops defeat the terrorist Abu
Sayyaf Group. – Victor Reyes
