LBC Ad Angers Migrante, Demands Pull-Out

"Our remittances have paid for our children's education but LBC had the gall
to use the word remittance to falsely educate our children," said Gina
Esguerra, secretary general of Migrante International, who reacted against
an LBC ad on remittance. The ad showed actor Edu Manzano lauding a pupil
for "correctly" spelling remittance as LBC.

Migrants are furious, said Esguerra. "How this ad has passed government
regulatory bodies like the Department of Education or MTRCB is beyond me."
No matter how the ad tried to sound funny, the implication is grave, said
Esguerra. "How far can we go so low that teachers are depicted as
miseducating our children, at harap-harapan pa." No amount of literary
license, poetic justice or humor can justify this, she added. The ad is
plain wrong and rouses moral inidgnation.

What the ad has succeeded, said Esguerra, is to show how the education
system has gone totally bankrupt. "We as migrants break our backs abroad
and suffer from a lot of indignities just to send our children to school.
But look at what we see on TV. An ad that adds insult to our injuries and
mocks our children's intelligence as well."

The most honorable thing to do is to pull out this ad, said Esguerra. "The
ad is offensive to migrants and their families, an outrage to all parents,
an affront to all teachers, and a gross display of miseducation that
victimizes our children," she averred.