Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila Intramuros, Manila. INQUIRER PHOTO / RICHARD A. REYES
All six of Manila’s House representatives have joined forces to ask the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to reimburse the city government-run Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) for around P340 million worth of college scholarships it granted to students under the agency’s Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) program using updated rates.
House Resolution No. 2126 filed by Manila Representatives Ernesto Dionisio Jr., Rolando Valeriano, Joel Chua, Edward Maceda, Irwin Tieng, and Bienvenido Abante Jr. cited PLM’s “dire financial situation” due to CHEd’s failure to pay what it owes the university for the academic year (AY) 2023 to 2024.
They said that without the reimbursement, the university would not have enough funds to operate beyond June 2025.
The lawmakers pointed out that unlike state universities and colleges, the PLM does not receive allocations from the General Appropriations Act and is not fully funded by the City of Manila. “Prior to 2018, (PLM) had been constrained to collect tuition and other school fees from its students to augment its budget,” they said.
Despite this, the PLM complied in 2018 with CHEd Memorandum Order No. 11 (CMO 2018-11) which required it and other public schools to exempt from paying tuition and other fees qualified students under Republic Act No. 10931 or its UniFAST scholarship program.
According to the memorandum, “PLM would be entitled to reimbursement by the CHEd for the tuition and other school fees it would otherwise be collecting from its students.”
Deferred hike
In 2018, the university was about to implement but deferred a hike in tuition and other fees under a five-year moratorium on rate increases imposed by RA 10931. At the time, other state universities and colleges were already charging P1,200 per unit compared with PLM’s P293 per unit.
“After the five-year moratorium expired in January 2023, the PLM Board of Regents issued Board Resolution No. 5057, raising the rates of tuition and other school fees. Particularly, tuition was increased from P293 per unit to P1,200 per unit,” the lawmakers said in their resolution.
The new rates for AY 2023-2024 were submitted to CHEd, which posed no objections.
“After two fiscal years, Ched has not yet committed to reimburse the PLM using these new rates,” the lawmakers said.
Depleted
“The PLM had been operating at a loss and was only able to cover the operating deficits of the past years with its reserves, which unfortunately, have now been depleted,” they added.
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“If CHEd and UniFAST continue to reimburse PLM using the old rates, [it] would not have enough funds to continue operating beyond the middle of next year,” they said, asserting the school’s legal entitlement to be reimbursed using the updated rates.
CHEd Chair Prospero de Vera III, however, told the Inquirer that “as far as I know, CHED has no unpaid funds to PLM.”
According to him, UniFAST always downloads (transfers) payments to the school in question once it submits the required documents for reimbursements.
But De Vera clarified that the lawmakers may be referring to the remaining disbursements for the current semester of AY 2024 to 2025.
“Unifast is still awaiting downloading of funds from DBM (Department of Budget and Management),” he said. “It will be given to them as soon as DBM gives the money to CHEd-UniFAST.”