Lawmaker laments cuts in budget of state schools

Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon: Lump sum allocations vulnerable to corruption. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—A party-list lawmaker on Tuesday lamented budget cuts for 79 out of 110 state universities and colleges in 2014 despite an assurance by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) chair Patricia Licuanan that schools would get additional allocations from a P5-billion special fund.

At the CHEd budget hearing at the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon said the P5 billion was part of a P6-billion discretionary lump sum fund or “pork barrel” under the CHEd. This was “problematic,” he added.

The fund allots P5 billion for capital outlays and scholarship programs of state universities and colleges (SUCs), and P1 billion for a Higher Education Development Fund which comes from travel tax collections, sales from lotto operations, and collections of the Professional Regulation Commission.

Ridon said the problem with these lump sum allocations was that they were vulnerable to corruption because the program of expenditure was not presented.

“It can also be used for patronage politics, with CHEd and the President prioritizing schools under the districts of Palace allies over others,” he said in a statement.

Licuanan, however, disputed Ridon’s comparison of the special fund and the congressional pork barrel. The P5-billion fund was not in the CHEd budget and would go directly to the SUCs, she said.

As for the remaining P1 billion, which is the Higher Education Development Fund, she said there were “very, very clear rules” for using the fund. CHEd would be unable to use it without a project proposal, which would be submitted to the budget department, she said.

“It’s not something that CHEd uses easily,” she said.

Meanwhile, Licuanan also confirmed that it remains CHEd’s goals to wean the SUCs away from government funding and get them to raise more funds for themselves. There are limits to what the SUCs can do to generate income, Licuanan added.

“Government funding, I suppose, will always be there, but the share they will raise on their own will hopefully increase. But there are guidelines on acceptable ways of increasing income,” she said.

But several University of the Philippines students apparently did not like what they heard, as they shortly staged a protest in the Andaya Hall, disrupting the budget deliberations.

They shouted that education was a right, and that the education situation has not improved under the Aquino administration.