Escudero: P8-B yearly cost of mandatory ROTC may strain PH budget

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine government would have a hard time funding the mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) if it were approved and implemented at present, Senate President Chiz Escudero said on Thursday.

In a press conference, Escudero said he met with Defense Chief Gilberto Teodoro on Wednesday, who informed him that the implementation of mandatory ROTC would cost more than P8 billion a year.

“More than P8 billion yearly is needed for its full implementation each year. To fully implement it, this can only be achieved within three years, requiring approximately P27 billion” said Escudero in Filipino.

Escudero, a staunch critic of the proposed mandatory ROTC, noted that the whopping P8 billion should instead be used for other pressing matters, not solely in “one aspect only.”

Later into the presser, the Senate chief was asked whether or not the government could afford such an amount for a single program, to which Escudero admitted it could not.

“Right now, it will be tough. As far as I can say, it will be tough, especially given the other expenditures that the government needs to allocate funds for in the coming year given the elections,” he said.

“But to give you an idea of what Congress could be weighing in terms of deciding certain matters, P27 billion or P8 billion a year can actually fund a lot of things in the Department of Health, Department of Education, with State Universities and Colleges [as well as the] Pantawid [Pamilyang Pilipino] program,” he added.

Apart from divulging the amount needed to fund mandatory ROTC, Escudero said the Department of National Defense, through Teodoro, sought an amendment to the ROTC bill, proposing that reserves should not be automatically enlisted.

“They said ROTC members should not be automatically enlisted in the reserves, as they would not be able to absorb them. Currently, the National Service Training Program (NSTP) has a long backlog in accommodating reserves who are applying,” said Escudero in Filipino.

“They also don’t want each school — if you can recall, each school used to have assigned jobs in relation to the ROTC. They said it should not be like that; training provided at each school should be kept generic, if possible,” he added.

In July, the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council tagged the bill on mandatory ROTC as one of the priority measures for passage by June 2025.

The Philippines’ mandatory ROTC was abolished following the death of 19-year-old University of Santo Tomas student Mark Welson Chua.

Chua, who allegedly exposed corruption in the university’s ROTC program, was found dead on March 18, 2001.

According to the UST’s student publication The Varsitarian, Chua’s decomposing body was found rolled in a carpet. His hands and legs were hogtied while his face was wrapped with duct tape.

Not long after, Republic Act No. 9163, also known as the NSTP Act of 2001, was signed into law.

The measure allowed students to choose from the following service components: ROTC, The Literacy Training Service, and The Civil Welfare Training Service.

READ: Dela Rosa sure about passage of mandatory ROTC bill in Senate