MANILA, Philippines -- The Department of Education has wasted millions of pesos in government funds by mishandling several projects, according to the Congressional Planning and Budget Department of the House of Representatives.

In a document dated September 2008 and released to media Wednesday, among the projects mentioned were the:

• Purchase of P667.95 million worth of multimedia equipment that were found to be defective, not appropriate for the schools where these were distributed, and were thus were not maximized for classroom instruction in 13 regions.

This was also cited in a separate Commission on Audit document, which noted that computers and CDs were distributed to schools that neither had electricity nor computer laboratories or where teachers had limited knowledge in operating computers.

• Purchase of P57.3 million worth of textbooks and manuals that had gathered dust in school stockrooms and libraries;
• Purchase of P67.2 million worth of supplementary and reference materials that were bought by the DepEd division offices in Regions 6, 7, and 13 despite a moratorium on their expenses;
• Construction of classrooms in 1,329 schools that “"have the least need” for them
• Purchase of 84,254 sets of tables and chairs and 15,748 armchairs that cost P197 million but which were given to “2,777 elementary and 899 secondary schools identified as having adequate seat provisions for SY 2004-2007"; and
• Receipt of over P30 million worth of defective school tables, chairs, and armchairs in which officials had "failed to conduct proper inspection of these deliveries before acceptance."

Despite all these, the DepEd has asked for a P1.67-billion budget for 2009, a 13 percent increase from this year's allocation, it said. DepEd presented its budget lasr September 11 at the House.

Basic education performance has also remained low because less than 80 percent of the total number of students has made it to Grade 5, "a survival rate of that is worse than in Indonesia and Vietnam," it said.