‘Help 338 students with disallowed grants’

MANILA, Philippines — An administration lawmaker yesterday called on Social Welfare Secretary Erwin Tulfo to help 338 students with his agency’s education aid after the Commission on Audit (COA) disallowed their scholarship grants.

House Deputy Majority Leader and Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin said it would help these students a lot if the P4.4 million they were asked to return to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is covered by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

“We are humbly asking Social Welfare Secretary Tulfo because (the DSWD) have this program like the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS), where they can draw funds from for these students to be able to pay CHED,” Garin said.

“This is to free (the students) from debt and that they will no longer worry from it. This amount is big, and their parents may have resorted to borrowing money because of this,” she added, referring to the COA’s reimbursement order for the double scholarship grant.

The fund was earlier disallowed by the audit body, saying the fund represents “excessive scholarship grants.”

The “Notice of Disallowances” was issued to CHED following the discovery of grantees who were able to collect two types of financial assistance, which meant that the students were paid twice, which is against its policy of non-duplication of financial benefits.

To rectify this, students who received double or excessive grants were required to reimburse the amount equivalent to the overpayment.

Meanwhile, Assistant Minority Leader and Camarines Sur Rep. Gabriel Bordado of the opposition moved to restore the cuts in the proposed budgets of state universities and colleges (SUCs), the University of the Philippines (UP) System and the UP-Philippine General Hospital (PGH).

“I am categorically and strongly calling for the restoration of the budget cuts of SUCs and the University of the Philippines, particularly the Philippine General Hospital, Madam Speaker,” Bordado said during the plenary budget deliberations.

Under the 2023 general appropriations bill, which is based on the executive branch’s National Expenditure Program (NEP), SUCs are given a budget of P93.08 billion, which is P10.89 billion or 10.48 percent lower than this year’s P103.97 billion allocation.

Bordado’s motion would restore cuts in the maintenance and other operating expenses of SUCs, which suffered the most because of the lower budget for next year.

The executive has also slashed by P2.5 billion the proposed budget for the UP System and another P893 million from the proposed budget of the UP-PGH.

The UP System has a proposed budget of P23.10 billion for 2023 under the NEP that the executive submitted to the House last week, an amount lower than this year’s P25.6 billion allocation.

The education sector will receive a total of P852.8 billion covering the Department of Education, SUCs, CHED and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.

In a related development, the DSWD said it has gone over budget from its P1.5-billion allocation for the education assistance distribution to indigent students, which is funded by the AICS program.

DSWD spokesman Assistant Secretary Romel Lopez said his department had issued P1.65 billion in their education aid distribution to 676,922 distressed students.

Lopez told reporters that the additional funds that had to be provided for the aid distribution to accommodate all approved applicants were taken from the DSWD’s regular funds.

He added that the DSWD disbursed a total of P201,018,000 in the last payout last Saturday.

“As of 6 p.m. of Sept. 24, the last Saturday of the implementation of the education assistance (payout), a cumulative total of 676,922 beneficiaries were served nationwide with a total cumulative amount disbursed of P1,652,607,000,” Lopez told The STAR.

“The said total beneficiaries comprise 31 percent of the college/vocational level, 31.90 percent for the elementary level, 22.90 percent for the high school level and 14.20 percent for the senior high school level,” he added.

The DSWD will have to study any move to extend the program, according to Lopez. – Rainier Allan Ronda