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May 30, 2008 MORATORIUM ON TUITION FEE HIKE NOT ENOUGH Civil society calls on stop on budget cuts on education
The Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI), the group of nongovernment and people’s organizations that pioneered civil society engagement in the Philippine national budget process, called on State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) to be vigilant in the release of their budget from the national government. The ABI also called on the Administration to, more than the moratorium on tuition fee hike in SUCs, strictly implement the real solution which is for the government to immediately stop the budget cuts on education; provide a monitoring scheme of SUC’s expenses and income generation funds; halt the flawed policy of creating more SUCs; and implement a program for the strengthening and conversion of present state schools into institutions of quality tertiary education without succumbing to privatization and “rationalization” schemes. Former national treasurer and SocialWatch Philippines lead convenor Leonor Magtolis Briones said that the President’s moratorium on tuition fee increases is not enough. “The government, as mandated by the constitution, should give priority to education. The public higher education system is suffering from a lack of resource inputs and a defective governance framework. Although the government plan is to create more state schools, it is coupled with a contradicting policy of massive budget reductions in public tertiary education,” Briones said. She called attention to the fact that the share of national government in SUCs financing has been steadily declining from 85 percent in 2001 to 77 percent in 2005 as schools are forced to shoulder their own expenses. Consequently, SUC spending per student had declined by 23 percent from Php 17,000 in 2004 to Php 12,930 in 2006. Youth Against Debt, the youth arm of the ABI which lead the campaign for higher budgetary allocations for tertiary education, added that the government should focus on strengthening existing SUCs instead of building more public SUCs because of patronage politics. “The direct result of building more SUCs to provide for the popularity of government officials is a decrease in the per-unit budget allocation to public higher education. This compromises the absorptive capacity of the schools and prompts the existing SUCs to conduct cost-recovery and cost-sharing as a survival strategy. The SUCs are compelled to devolve to the students an increasing part of its financial and operational burdens,” according to YAD Cognizant of this situation, the ABI proposed increases in the budget for higher education for 2008. Consistent with the ABI budget proposals, this year’s national budget allocates an increase of P340,292,000, including P206,489,000 increase in the budget of state universities and colleges classified as Centers of Excellence; P83,803,000 increase in the budget of non center of excellence state universities and colleges; and P50,000,000 for the construction of National Center for Good Governance in the National College of Public Administration and Governance at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Briones said that with these gains, SUCs should practice vigilance and exert their right to their budgetary allocations. She added that the Presidency should bear in mind that Article 14, Section 5 (5) of the Constitution states that “the State shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction fulfillment.” Eman Hizon of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, meanwhile reiterated the ABI proposal to Amend/ Repeal PD 1177 in Sec 26 (B) Book 6 of 1987 Revised Administrative Code or the Automatic Appropriations Law for Debt Servicing. “With about two-thirds of our current resources being siphoned away by debt servicing, it is very clear that the government is prioritizing continuous and disproportionate paying of incurred debts over education. This is a clear deviation from the constitutional guarantee that education is prioritized by Government,” he said She reiterated the call by Social Watch Philippines that, as proven after long years of providing cash transfers in Latin American countries, improving the economy, providing social services and creating job opportunities are the real solutions. Cash transfers only helped in attaining political objectives; but it was never proven that it can help solve the problem of poverty. #
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