By Joel M. Sy Egco

THE Commission on Human Rights is asking the public to take an active part in monitoring the conduct of random drug testing that is scheduled to be implemented in selected public and private schools today.

CHR chairman Leila de Lima said her office will be open to parents and teachers who feel the rights of their children or students may have been violated during the testing.

De Lima had bristled at the decision of the government to push through with the random drug test despite her proposal to postpone it.

?We believe that the element of sufficient time and extensive information dissemination for all concerned in the implementation of the random drug test has not been considered at the least. We should never look at the test as a trial-and-error endeavor because the stigma that goes with [a positive test result] may be worth the child?s future and may last a lifetime? De Lima said.

Since the drug testing will commence today, the CHR chair has proposed several measures and guidelines for the government to act on.

Chief among these, De Lima said, is that the identity of students sampled, those who tested positive, those whose results were negative and even those who refused the random drug test, must be kept confidential and protected at all costs.

Necessarily, disciplinary measures are to be imposed without prejudice to filing of a suit or a case by the aggrieved child or his/her family against erring individuals or institutions. Another is that the samples for random testing will only be used for drug testing and no other purpose.

There must also be provisions which prohibit the school or any agencies from imposing any sanction, criminal or administrative, on a child found to be a user or a dependent child whose parent or parents will refuse to have the child undergo the random drug test.