A party-list lawmaker is pressing for the passage of a bill to require the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) to provide free legal assistance to teachers who face poll-related cases in the performance of their duties during elections.

A TEACHER party-list Rep. Ulpiano P. Sarmiento said House Bill 6657, which he filed to protect teachers from possible legal harassment during elections, should already be passed and enacted with barely a year remaining before the 2010 national and local elections.

He said teachers deserve free legal aid as they risk their lives just to ensure clean and honest electoral exercises.

Sarmiento said teachers have become unwilling pawns to the vindictiveness of losing electoral candidates who charge them with election offenses just to harass and coerce them.

Sarmiento said, the teachers, underpaid and unappreciated as they are, do not have any existing institutional legal support to aid them in election related cases.”

He noted that while Batas Pambansa Blg. 232, otherwise known as the Education Act of 1982, mandates the State to provide free legal aid to the teachers over cases filed against them in line with their electoral function, it could not be implemented due to its ambiguity.

Sarmiento said HB 6657 would ensure free legal assistance to teachers in electoral cases as it would mandate IBP’s provision of legal assistance to them.

The bill would categorize teachers facing election offenses as “indigent litigants” to be given the requisite free legal assistance.

Under the measure, any teacher who would wish to avail themselves of free legal aid service must immediately, upon receipt of the initiatory pleading, submit this with other pertinent records to the nearest IBP chapter where the election-related case is filed for proper action.

Sarmiento said the local chapter of the IBP must, within five days from receipt of the records, immediately provide representation to the teacher in the manner provided by the Rules of Court and other laws.

The legal representation shall be free of charge except the administrative fees paid in relation to the case, Sarmiento said.

The bill was co-authored by Representatives Mariano U. Piamonte (Party-list, A TEACHER) and Jonathan A. Dela Cruz (Party-list, ABAKADA GURO).