By Dang Samson Garcia
SENATOR Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa asked the Commission on Higher Education on how it plans to pay private schools that accommodated students enrolled under the Tertiary Education Subsidy program of the government.
Dela Rosa said several private schools reached out to him regarding unpaid TES funds for students enrolled during the 2021-2022 school year.
“How can we pay them (private schools)? Can we simply tell them to forget about it because the government does not have funding?” Dela Rosa asked.
In return, CHED Chairperson Prospero De Vera III assured the committee that it has already resolved the issue and identified a source of funding to pay the schools.
Meanwhile, Senator Risa Hontiveros questioned CHED about its reported failure to fully utilize its 2022 funds to implement the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act.
Hontiveros noted the agency’s declining disbursement rate for the provision of free college education — from 79.7 percent in 2020, 65.9 percent in 2021, to only 47.7 percent by the end of 2022.
“Why did the CHED find it difficult to obligate and disburse funds…when this is highly needed by the students and would give them an assurance that they would be able to utilize this?” Hontiveros asked.
De Vera explained the low disbursement could have been caused by the belated requests for reimbursement of tuition and miscellaneous fees by local universities and colleges, adding the utilization of their 2022 funds continued until the first quarter of 2023.