PNOY SUCs

The Senate has approved on third and final reading the 2011 national budget, including the budget for its dole-out program and the controversial allocation for state universities and colleges. The budget for the conditional cash transfer program is at P21 billion, the budget for SUCs at P23.4 billion. Senate President Franklin Drilon said there were no budget cuts for the SUC. Budget Secretary Butch Abad confirms there are to be increase either.

Abad, former education Secretary of former President Arroyo, said government has to prioritize other pressing socio-economic need that is why it cannot increase funding for SUCs. That more pressing socio-economic concern of course is the CCT program, a dole-out program which efficiency is unproven (and to be implemented by a secretary who’d been dragged into a controversy involving supposed money for the poor.  That is not very reassuring.

Education is an equally important socio-economic need that should not be set aside because of a dole-out program. Simple question: who are the beneficiaries of the CCT? And who are the people enrolled in state universities and colleges? They are one and the same.

Let say for the sake of argument that one Santos family receives money from the CCT and let’s say that a member of the Santos brood is a student from an SUC. Due to the lack of support for SUCs, the Santos student will have to spend more, and guess where the Santos parent will get the money from: the CCT dole-out.  Some of course will dare say that government in providing the CCT solved the Santos family problem. That is of course glossing over the fact that it was government, in denying SUCs enough funding, created the Santos problem.

Government defenders will of course argue that I’m stretching the scenario a bit. But that is what’s happening at the ground. SUCs, tasked to raise money for its own needs, will be forced to create INCOME-GENERATING PROJECTS that will have students as cornered market. Either sila pinapabenta ng tiket o pinabibili ng tiket. Spaces, used to be allotted for the activities of students and offices of student organizations are being leased to private interests so these SUCs can have their own money. Di nga ba’t para nang mall ang karamihan sa mga SUCs?

Our government officials, most of whom are educated in private schools because their parents can afford it, should be reminded that SUCs are the only access of the poor to education, our only chance to improve our lives. I hate to sound like reducing this to a class issue. Minsan sakay naman kayo ng IKOT-TOKI, pasyal naman kayo sa RILES, para maintindihan ninyo kung ano ang epekto ng pinaggagawa ninyo.