House members get P476-M grants

MANILA, Philippines –The head of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) played Santa Claus to congressmen yesterday, promising to give them P2 million each in scholarship funds next year.

Tesda chief Jose Syjuco Jr., who holds Cabinet rank, made the promise during a hearing on the proposed P6.7-billion 2009 budget of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), to which his autonomous agency is attached administratively.

“To have a level playing field among House members, we will continue to provide each congressional district with P2 million in scholarship funds,” he told members of the House appropriations committee.

Syjuco, a former Iloilo congressman, said he made available the same amount to his former colleagues last year, but many of them have not availed of their allocations or still have balances.

There are 238 House members, including those representing party-list groups. If militant representatives like those from Bayan Muna, who usually are not counted in the allocation of pork barrel money, were included, Tesda would be dispensing a total of P476 million in additional “pork” to congressmen next year.

The P2 million is in addition to the annual regular allotment of P70 million for each House member. Additional pork barrel funds are usually squeezed or “extorted” from heads of departments and other agencies during budget hearings.

The funds Syjuco promised are to be used for vocational and technical education scholarships at Tesda-run learning centers and privately owned vocational schools.

Tesda will have P1.1 billion in scholarship money next year. Its P3.2-billion budget is about half of DOLE’s 2009 outlay.

There have been reports that scholars chosen by several congressmen are enrolled in schools that they themselves own. These lawmakers are in effect using their allocations to subsidize their schools.

This is like the practice of some House members of funneling funds to their private foundations.

Syjuco said aside from the P2 million for each district, a congressman wishing to request for additional scholarship funds would have to provide counterpart funding from his pork barrel.

“For instance, if you are requesting for P2.5 million more, you will have to provide a counterpart fund of P2.5 million. This way, you get something for nothing (for the P2 million) and something for something (for the additional funds),” he said.

But Tawi-Tawi Rep. Nur Jaafar, who raised the issue about Tesda scholarships, apparently felt slighted.

“You don’t say that we get something for nothing. Remember that it’s us who appropriate the funds,” Jaafar told the Tesda chief.

Syjuco also suggested to his former colleagues that if they want to build vocational training centers in their districts, they could use their regular pork barrel funds.

“Or better yet, resort to budgetary insertions. You can ask your chairman, who knows these things,” he said. He was referring to Quirino Rep. Junie Cua.

Syjuco said if House members could build training centers, “we will run them for you by providing the staff.”

He informed his former colleagues that the 125 Tesda-run institutes in the country have graduated more than 100,000 enrollees, half of whom found employment shortly after graduation.

He said their graduates in welding, carpentry and care giving courses almost always land jobs.

But the course that offers the best employment opportunity is animation “because our animation graduates are 100-percent employed,” he added.

During the hearing, congressmen called for the allocation of more funds to help hundreds of thousands of new graduates find jobs abroad and to help distressed overseas workers return home.

The lawmakers learned that some 2.9 million members of the labor force are presently without jobs.