Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano on Monday took to task Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles for seeking a cut in the department’s proposed P10.28-billion budget to help fund the newly passed Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act, or the free tuition program for state universities and colleges.
He said DAR’s budget reduction is a “state abandonment and it pits the poor against the poor.”
“Free tuition is equally important as students are enabled to exercise their right to education. Agrarian reform is founded on the right of landless farmers and farmworkers to directly and indirectly own the lands they till,” he said.
While Mariano said that he believes in the good intention of Nograles to find possible sources to fund the free tuituon law, he maintained that the agrarian reform program should not suffer.
In the 2017 DAR report, the agency’s budget was allotted for the delivery of its three major outputs – land tenure security, agrarian justice delivery and agrarian reform beneficiary development and sustainability.
According to Mariano, with the proposed budget slash, DAR will not be able to afford to reduce its services to poor Filipino farmers “as change has already been brought to the agrarian sector.”
Congress sources who attended the previous budget deliberation said the proposal came as a surprise considering that most members of the committee and other representatives proposed to augment DAR’s budget allocation.
The agency is proposing an increase of 48 percent or P16 billion for 2018 from P10.8 in 2017. The DAR chief said the agency’s proposed budget does not even comprise a percent of the P3.767-trillion national budget in the National Expenditure Program.
“We recognize the right to education of the Filipino youth, but why source funds from the sector that also needs more government support?” he asked.
“To fully emancipate all landless peasants from the bondage of the soil, all forms and remnants of feudalism and other types of unjust tenurial arrangements must be completely abolished.”
Based on the fund utilization report submitted by DAR to the Department of Budget and Management, the 2016 unobligated allotment as of December 2016 was only P2.34-billion against the P5 billion quoted by the House Committee on Appropriations.
Meanwhile, Senator Bam Aquino on Monday stressed the need to engage and consult stakeholders before the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for Republic Act 10931 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act is finalized.
Aquino said there are still a lot of details to iron out before the Commission on Higher Education’s IRR is completed.
“We went around in the state colleges to get the side of the students and administrators of schools,” said Aquino.
“It is important to engage with all the stakeholders and come up with a most effective implementation plan,” added the principal sponsor and co-author of the measure in the Senate during his stint as chairman of the Committee on Education.
He also underscored the need to hold healthy discussions on how to craft an IRR that will ensure effective implementation, based on its original intention of the law.
Aquino said it is important to talk about the details of the law in coming out with the IRR. He said that the big reform in the educational system will just be wasted if the main goal of the law will not be achieved.
He said other important issues such as summer and make up classes, residency issues, and grade requirements should also be tackled.
“Though we are not part of the group finalizing the IRR, we are committed to sharing the comments, concerns and suggestions we’ve collated from students, parents, teachers and other concerned citizens,” the senator said.
The law will provide free education to students in SUCs, local universities and colleges (LUCs) and vocational schools under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). Aside from tuition fees, the government will shoulder miscellaneous and all other mandatory fees.
Scholarship grants will also be made available to students of both public and private college and universities. Plus, it would provide a new and improved student loan program, where students can apply for financing for other education expenses.
If fully implemented, Sen. Bam said the law will benefit around two million students in all state universities and colleges and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)-run technical-vocational institutions in the country.
In addition, students taking post-graduate studies can avail of the new and improved student loan program and scholarships under the law.
The measure has languished in the legislative mill for years before it was passed during Sen. Bam’s time as chairman of the Committee on Education in the 17th Congress. This was Aquino’s 19th law in his four years as senator.
In support of Aquino’s call, other lawmakers also called for a thorough study of the IRR on the free tuition law for SUCs.
Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte warned against a haphazardly-drafted set of IRR that might only lead to delays in implementing the pro-education statute.
Villafuerte called on the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and other agencies involved in the drafting of the IRR to conduct extensive consultations with all affected stakeholders to ensure that the law is effectively implemented without hitches starting June next year.
“We laud the CHED, the budget department and the other agencies drafting the IRR for recognizing the need to swiftly approve the rules and regulations of this student-friendly law in support of President Duterte’s pro-poor agenda, but they should not be too hasty in undertaking this task so as to avoid coming out with a half-baked set of rules and regulations,” Villafuerte, vice chair of the House committee on appropriations, said.
The CHED expects the IRR of Republic Act 10931 to be signed in 15 days or only less than a month after President Duterte signed the law last August 3.
“As what had happened with the Anti-Distracted Driving Act (ADDA), a hurriedly crafted IRR could lead to confusion and delays in the full and effective implementation of this game-changing law,” he said.
Villafuerte said that widening the access of the youth to college education will enable them to eventually get quality and better-paying jobs, which, in turn will spell better living standards for them.