MANILA, Philippines - Student leaders from different state universities and colleges (SUCs) went to the office of Department of Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad on Friday to lobby for higher budget for SUCs as the group maintained that the Aquino administration still underspent when it came to higher education.
The group, representing the SUC Budget Watch Alliance, Akbayan Youth and the Student Council Alliance of the Philippines (SCAP), the largest student council in the country, said the crisis in education will remain a problem if the fundamental issue of budget is not properly addressed.
Although Budget Secretary Abad was supposed to participate in the dialogue, he however sent his apologies to the group for not attending because he had an urgent meeting to finalize the 2013 national budget. Present in the dialogue were assistant secretary Luz M. Cantor, chief budget and management specialist Dante De Chavez and regional director Ruby Esteban.
The student leaders stressed that quality, relevant and accessible public tertiary education would be impossible without sufficient support from the government.
“We call on this administration to heed the call of the youth and students to give greater premium to education, and prioritization of education should never discriminate tertiary education,” said Heart Diño, chairperson of UP Diliman student council and SCAP-NCR.
“If SUCs were forced to be self-sufficient, they will not achieve their inherent goal of providing education to those who are most in need -- the underprivileged and poor families in our society,” Diño added.
“Inadequate facilities, few teaching personnel – these are some of the problems that SUCs are currently facing, resulting in tuition increases and disturbing the creation of more income generating projects to sustain the school’s operation. With this current situation, our government should provide higher budget for SUCs,” quipped Akbayan Youth’s Marian Bahalla.
UP system needs P18.4 billion
Jason Alacapa, UP Manila student council chairperson, said, “Insufficient funding of UP negatively affects its capacity to fulfill its mandate as a national university. According to DBM, UP will receive a higher budget this year amounting to almost P10.8 billion, but it is still far from the P18.4 billion that UP system would need to properly manage its campuses nationwide.”
He mentioned that the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), which gets a share in the UP system budget, only receives about 60% of what it needs in relation to its annual expenditure.
"Due to this, free services for patients earning below P7,500 a month are almost scrapped,” Alacapa added.
AR Angcos, president of Philippine Normal University (PNU), argued that classes in the university are being merged since the school's budget is not enough to hire additional teaching personnel. He said there are not enough adequate facilities for ICT training to make future teachers technologically competitive.
“As the government has shown its commitment to progress in terms of education, it’s at the same time sending a wrong message by drastically lowering the budget of the country’s best source of quality teachers, which is PNU,” Angcos continued.
The group also rationalized the need for additional budget for other SUCs especially those that are Centers for Excellence and Centers for Development sucj as Mindanao State University and Central Luzon State University.
School in Pag-asa Island
The group likewise asked for sufficient funding support for the Pag-asa Elementary School, a new school being built in Pag-asa Island, one of the disputed islands in the Spratly group of islands in the West Philippine Sea.
Jana Cabuhat, national chairperson of the SCAP, said: “Students are forced to go to mainland Palawan to attend classes because Kalayaan town has no schools. Now that the local government is putting up its own elementary school, DBM should fully support the initiative.”
The group concluded the meeting by asking the DBM officials to allocate appropriate budget increases for SUCs and to lay down a progressive reform agenda for the education sector that does not discriminate against tertiary education.
There was also a clarification with regard to the increase in the budget of SUCs. This is due to the “roadmap” presented by the Commission on Higher Education.
In parting, the group successfully got the commitment of the officials to implement the coordination for the SUC budget process and for the creation of an alternative budget for SUCs.
source: interaksyon.com
