A LAWMAKER urged the Duterte administration to fulfill its promise to provide free education to underprivileged yet deserving students especially at the tertiary level, denouncing the “conditional implementation” of the new free tuition policy in state universities and colleges (SUCs).
Kabataan party-list Rep. Sarah Elago said she will seek an audience with President Rodrigo Duterte to clarify the matter as all 1.6 million SUC students must benefit from the new free tuition policy.
Elago protested the conditional implementation of free tuition in SUCs starting the first semester of school year 2017-2018 and said Republic Act 10924, or the 2017 General Appropriations Act, clearly spelled out that no tuition should be collected from public university students starting next school year.
Citing Special Provision 1 for the budget of SUCs, Elago said RA 10924 states that “starting the first semester of SY 2017-SY 2018, no tuition fee shall be collected from undergraduate students.” In lieu of tuition collection, SUCs are given P8.3 billion in the 2017 budget to cover for said fees.
However, in his veto message, Duterte only ordered a conditional implementation, Elago said.
“Yet as with all new programs, there is a need to safeguard the proper implementation of the provision of free tuition fee. It is important to underscore that we must still give priority to financially disadvantaged but academically able students.”
“Accordingly, the CHED and the Department of Budget and Management shall issue necessary guidelines which shall include, among others, the standards and procedure for entitlement and availment of free tuition by students of SUCs as well as proper mechanism for the SUCs to tap the Higher Education Support Fund,” Duterte said in the 2017 veto message.
Elago voiced concern that the President’s message on conditional implementation might counter the essence of the provision which clearly qualifies all SUC students for free tuition.
“If we read the president’s message very carefully, he did not explicitly state that not all SUC students will be able to avail of free tuition. He only stressed that financially disadvantaged students should be prioritized. Yet the intention of said message might indeed be to limit who will be covered,” Elago said.
“Worse, we fear is that the CHED and DBM will misinterpret the president’s message and issue guidelines that will exclude most SUC students from the free tuition policy,” she added.
She said limiting guidelines of the CHED and the DBM defeats the purpose of the law.
“Implementing guidelines can only be crafted within the bounds of the law. The provision for free tuition in the 2017 General Appropriations Act is clear—every SUC student should be covered by the free tuition policy. CHED and DBM cannot disallow the availing of free tuition in any SUC by any undergraduate student. To do so will be to contravene the law,” Elago said.
She warned that in the coming weeks, youth and student groups across the country will also mount nationwide protests and mass demonstrations to assert the swift and blanket implementation of the free tuition policy. “We cannot allow this initial victory to be snatched from us,” Elago said.
She said her group and other youth groups shall submit to CHED and DBM a draft implementing guideline that will ensure that all SUC students will be covered by the free tuition policy.
Elago also vowed that youth groups are ready to seek legal action and go as far as seeking redress in the Supreme Court if and when CHED and DBM issue guidelines that will disqualify SUC students from availing free tuition.