CHR report: Too few scholarships, job opportunities for Indigenous students
MANILA, Philippines — Due to lack of funds, the National Commission on Indigenous People has not able to accommodate all Indigenous persons requesting scholarship assistance, a new report by the Comission on Human Rights showed.
"Despite the vast amount of IP education advocacy and services funds, it is still not enough, as an NCIP representative relates," the report said.
The CHR report tracks the extent to which students — both in the formal and non-formal schooling system — were able to transition to work duri the COVID-19 pandemic and the factors that may prevent some from doing so.
Based on discussions with IP learners and NCIP representatives, even though many IPs want to go to school, not all can be accommodated by the NCIP, the report added.
The IP students are then referred to other government agencies with programs for indigenous people like the Commission on Higher Education, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority and the Department of Health.
In 2022, NCIP received a budget of P168 million, which it distributed to 13 regional offices for 10,397 student beneficiaries.
The CHR report also highlighted how Indigenous persons that complete their degree are greeted by sparse job opportunities, resulting in underemployment.
"Some college graduates do not practice their profession. As the NCIP participant reports, they know of someone who has finished a college degree and works as a salesperson," the report said.
The NCIP is also largely unaware of what happens to IP graduates after they finish schooling due to a lack of regular monitoring.
The report said that NCIP, which was created in 1997, is still working on improving the agency's monitoring mechanism, "particularly with the operationalization of the educational system program information system."
Since then, it has occasionally come under fire for reportedly discrediting legitimate schools and IP organizations led by Lumad persons and joining the government’s anti-communist task force in red-tagging human rights defenders.
- Latest
- Trending
