P3B budget for electricity to bring public schools ‘out of dark ages’–Recto

The proposed budget to bring electricity to public schools will jump to almost P3 billion next year, a crucial step in bringing an estimated 7,413 schools “out of the dark ages,” Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto said on Sunday.

“Almost half a century after man first walked on the moon, millions of students still go to schools without electricity in this corner of the earth,” Recto said in a statement.

Recto cited a 2015 report that one in six government elementary and high schools is not connected to a power grid.

Of these 7,413 schools, he said, 5,911 have no access “to a single watt of electricity,” while some 1,492 upland and island schools make do with solar panels or generator sets.

But a P2.97 billion allocation in the Department of Education’s (Deped) proposed 2018 budget for “electrification of on-grid schools” would allow students in these schools “to switch on computers, lights, and science equipment,” Recto said.

For years now, Recto said he has been urging Deped to “treat power and water as a basic education material like books and classrooms.”Power, he said, is an indispensable requirement in the drive to modernize schools.

“Wi-Fi, tablets, computers – they have to be plugged in to a power source,” the senator said.

Recto pointed out that schools without a reliable source of power will be left out of Deped’s multiyear program to computerize classrooms, which received P6.8 billion this year and P8.6 billion in 2018.

Recto said for schools far from power grids, the government has no option but to provide them with solar panels, or if they already have, add more.

Three years ago, Recto said only 899 schools had solar panels.

“But the boom in solar panel production has caused prices to fall, so there is no longer any excuse not to tap this clean energy,” he said.

According to Recto, he has advocated the mandatory installation in 46,739 schools of solar panels “to power up science laboratories so that students can have an actual example of a science lesson.”

Recto also expressed hope that DepEd’s P3 billion fund for electrification would be spent on time, “and shall not suffer the fate of many delayed education projects.”“Noong (During) 2014 at 2015, two years zero delivery ng (of) Math and Science equipment. Ganoon din sa (It’s the same with) computers, zero delivery in 2013 and 2014 from the funds appropriated that year,” Recto lamented.

“Sa napondohang (Out of the funded) 27,172 na (of) water and toilet facilities, ni isa walang natapos (not even one was finished) from 2013 to 2014,” he added.