MANILA, Philippines—The House of Representatives is ready to use its oversight power to block any moves by state and private schools to jack up their tuition amid the economic recession.

Speaker Prospero Nograles said the House leadership was keeping an “open mind” on the proposal of Bayan party-list Rep. Teodoro Casiño for a legislated three-year freeze on tuition hikes.

“This should only happen if the school owners and administrators will refuse to heed the clamor for a tuition increase moratorium,” Nograles said on Saturday.

He said the House had oversight power over private and state-run schools’ plans to raise tuition in the school year in June because the issue involved the public interest. He said the House would not hesitate to exercise its power to block unjustified tuition hikes.

Deputy Majority Leader Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara joined the clamor for a stop to tuition hikes after the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) reported in its Tuition Monitor hotline that at least a dozen schools were planning to charge higher fees despite an appeal by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) for a moratorium on increases.

Angara said he would push for a study of where the schools spent the tuition increases of the past years to determine whether administrators did set aside 70 percent of the new fees for salaries and other benefits for their faculty and non-academic personnel, and 20 percent for modernizing their facilities as mandated by law.

Meanwhile, CHEd acting executive director Julito Vitriolo on Sunday defended the agency’s removal of a “cap” on tuition increases.

It was complaints from students about the lack of consultations that partly led the agency to replace CHEd Memo (CM) No. 14 which required tuition hikes not to exceed the inflation rate.

The agency has implemented the old CMO No. 13, which got rid of the tuition cap but requires consultations, when dealing with requests from tertiary schools for a tuition hike.

“We did that because students were complaining that the tuition increases had become automatic and were being implemented without any consultation,” Vitriolo said. With a report from Germelina Lacorte, Rizalene Acac and Jeffrey Tupas, Inquirer Mindanao