Earlier, Education secretary Leonor Briones explained the original target of 47,000 classrooms was scaled back to 28,170 because of the higher cost of building modified calamity-resilient school building designs.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 3)– An infrastructure budget cut and the need to prioritize funding for another program led the Education department to complete only 11 out of the 47,000 classrooms in 2018, a Department of Education (DepEd) official said Monday.
Education Undersecretary Alain Del Pascua told the 2020 budget hearing of the House appropriations committee that the delay was caused by massive funding cuts in school building projects.
Del Pascua said that in 2018, the agency’s school building budget proposal was slashed by a little over half. Congress approved only around P100 billion. A portion of this amount, he added, funded the free public tertiary education program.
He said another reason for the delay is the time it takes for the Department of Public Works and Highways to begin construction in line with guidelines for contract awarding.
From 2014 to 2018, a total of 49,125 classrooms are in partial stages of construction, even as DepEd expects an increase in the number of enrollees for academic year 2019 to 2020 in over 60,000 schools it oversees, most of them public schools.
For 2019, Del Pascua said the Education department proposed ₱171 billion to fund its infrastructure program, but Congress only approved ₱31 billion, ₱4 billion less than what was apportioned by the Budget department.
Del Pascua said to make up for the budget cuts in the past two years, the agency proposed ₱259 billion for school building projects in 2020, but the Budget department only approved ₱36 billion.
Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Mike Defensor then proposed some budget restorations.
The lawmaker said, “Maybe we could reinstate yung proposal na budget. Yun pong cut na ito (This cut) is not just a matter of infrastructure.”
“Marami pong kabataan ang nawawalan ng access at sumisikip ang silid aralan pag di natutugunan ang karagdagang eskwela,” he added.
[Translation: A lot of children lose access (to education) and the classrooms get crowded if the need for schools is not addressed.]
The Education department remains to be the top priority in the proposed 2020 budget with ₱551.72 billion.
A statement from the DepEd dated August 19 said, “While only 11 classrooms were fully completed as of December 31, 2018, 27,469 are ongoing constructions, 16,936 are for mobilization, and 8,749 are under procurement. Following the Department’s timelines, around 11,826 are expected to be completed by the end of 2019.”
