What’s the real score on budget for tertiary education?

MANILA, Philippines — Are students in state universities and colleges (SUCs) misinformed when they staged walkouts and sit-ins against the supposed cut in budgets for their schools in the 2011 national budget?

Senator Franklin Drilon and Senate Majority Leader Vicente M. Sotto on Friday said there were no budget cuts for SUCs in the 2011 national budget proposed by the Aquino administration.

During Friday’s Senate hearing on the budget, Drilon and Sotto agreed that only unused congressional insertions for SUCs from last year’s budget were removed.

But Senate Minority Leader Alan Cayetano disagreed with the two senators, saying that P1.1 billion for maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) and P1.7 billion in capital outlay were removed from the allocation for SUCs.

Meanwhile, President Aquino said that SUCs must learn to be self-reliant in utilizing resources to cover slight cuts in respective budgets next year, a statement which tends to prove that were was indeed a budget reduction.

Reacting to the lightning rally staged by militant students against the budget cut on the funds of SUCs during an event in Baguio, the Chief Executive said the budget was realigned to increase allocations for basic education.

He said SUCs can recover the slice in their budgets by utilizing available resources to generate funds so that the government could concentrate bulk of its resources to basic education in order to empower the youth to become productive citizens of the country.

During interpellation on the allocation for education in the 2011 budget, Drilon and Sotto indicated that the Aquino administration has not cut the budgets for the country’s 112 SUCs but has, instead, added P2.81 billion for their operations starting next year as embedded in the proposed P207.3 billion budget of the Department of Education (DepEd).

Drilon explained that the 2010 national budget of the Arroyo administration had been “loaded with congressional insertions’’ or pork barrel which were not actually released because of the widening budget gap which is expected to reach P325 billion before the end of 2010.

Drilon said government subsidies to SUCs have been increased in next year’s budget to P21.7 billion, from only P19.6 billion submitted by then President Arroyo for congressional approval.

“So they (students and professors) were wrong. They were protesting against ghosts,’’ Sotto said.

In an interview at the sidelines of the Senate hearing on the budget, Cayetano refuted the assertions of Drilon and Sotto that the students “got the wrong information” on supposed budget cuts for SUCs.

Cayetano said that what the SUCs are actually pushing for is to restore the P1.1 billion budget for Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE) and the P1.7 for billion capital outlay that were removed from their budget.

Cayetano said the MOOE and the Capital outlay are not part of any congressional initiative.

“We are asking the president to review this. Ipaglalaban namin ang karapatan ng mga SUCs pagdating ng ‘bicameral conference’ para hindi lang ibalik ang P1.7-billion for capital outlay at P1.1-B for MOE, ngunit para dagdagan pa ang pondo ng mga SUCs as a whole,” Cayetano said.

Congress, he said, can tap the P66.908 unprogrammed fund of the proposed 2011 budget to increase the budget of the SUCs.

“What’s the sense of increasing allocations on other education-related programs if we will slash the budget of these academic institutions?” Cayetano said.

“That’s why I’m encouraging the students to let their voices be heard. Ako’y naniniwala na ang mga estudyante ay papakinggan din at namumulat sa mga issyung katulad nito,” he said. –MARIO B. CASAYURAN and HANNAH L. TORREGOZA, Manila Bulletin with a report from Dexter See)