The RITM will receive no fund for capital outlay.
The Eulogio “Amang” Rodriguez Medical Center will get the lowest budget of P103.85 million ($2.21 million). The National Center for Mental Health will be allotted P517.94 million ($11.06 million).
The budget for the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) for this year is P1.14 billion ($24.35 million), of which P878.56 million ($18.76 million) is allotted for personnel services and only P3 million ($64,075.18) for capital outlay.
Meanwhile, the Veterans Memorial Medical Center will receive P 742.40 million ($15.86 million) and the AFP Medical Center, P850.09 million ($18,156557).
In fact, the proposed health budget is lesser by P6.62 billion ($141.39 million) than the government’s counter-insurgency funds for next year, which amounts to P34.42 billion ($735.16 million).
Moreover, the health budget is less than half of the proposed budget for the Department of National Defense pegged at P56.4 billion ($1.2 billion).
The Arroyo government will also allocate some P3.3 billion ($70.48 million) next year for the National Health Insurance Program. The amount will be used to provide health insurance to 4.7 million indigent households.
The NHIP is the main instrument of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth).
Arroyo said there are 65 million Filipinos who have health insurance, including 15 million indigents.
However, in a study, the National Institute of Health maintained that the PhilHealth’s claim of coverage is overestimated by at least 20 percent.
The Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD) noted that the PhilHealth coverage bloated to 80 percent during the election period in 2007. In the past years, the coverage was only 61 percent.
Another study commissioned by the European Commission regarding PhilHealth coverage in Mindanao showed that only ten percent of the poor in Tawi-Tawi, 12 percent in Davao Oriental and 15 percent in Zamboanga del Norte and Maguindanao are covered by PhilHealth.
Education
The Department of Education (DepEd) will receive P167.9 billion ($3.59 billion) including P2 billion ($42.72 million) for construction of classrooms.
With the P2 billion budget, only 3,076 classrooms can be built. Arroyo said that each classroom costs P650,000 ($13,882.96).
In a statement, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) estimated that the DepEd needs to construct an additional 41,905 classrooms in order to attain a 1:45 classroom-to- student ratio.
Antonio Tinio, ACT chaiperson noted that at the elementary level, classroom shortages are concentrated in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon). At the secondary level, there are classroom shortages nationwide, but are most acutely felt in NCR, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, and Central and Western Visayas, he added.
The proposed budget will include P2.5 billion ($53.4 million) to fund the creation of 19,553 new teaching and non-teaching personnel.
ACT’s Tinio said, “To reduce class sizes to 40 students per class at the elementary level and 45 students per class at the secondary level, DepEd needs to hire 25,240 additional teachers.”
Tinio also criticized the ‘problematic’ computation of DepEd on the teacher-student ratios. “Teacher-pupil ratios don’t take factors such as class size, teacher specialization from Grade 4 onwards, and teaching load into consideration. This leads to an absurd situation where the DepEd claims that there is now a surplus of teachers just because the teacher-pupil ratio stands at 1:35 for elementary and 1:39 for high schools,” he said.
The budget for 112 state universities and colleges (SUCs) is only P22.57 billion ($482.06 million).
The University of the Philippines (UP) system will get P6.7 billion ($143.1 million), the biggest budget among SUCs. The UP has a population of more than 50,000. It is comprised of seven constituent universities located in 12 campuses throughout the country.
The Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), the largest university in terms of student population will only receive P663.64 million ($14.17 million). It has six campuses, two branches and ten extension campuses serving more than 52,000 students.
The Philippine Normal University (PNU), the country’s center for teacher education, will only get P282.32 million ($6.03 million). It has four campuses in the country.
Housing, social welfare
A meager P5.3 billion ($113.2 million) will be allotted for housing.
The P300 million will be allotted for the operational requirements of regulatory agencies such as the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB).
The National Housing Authority (NHA) will get P3.5 billion ($74.75 million). Arroyo said it will be used to set up resettlement sites and build new housing units.
Meanwhile, even as the DSWD budget will increase by 116 percent, the bulk will go to donations and subsidies. These include Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program, P5 billion ($106.79 million); and, Malusog na Simula, Yaman ng Bansa feeding program, P1.58 billion ($33.75 million).
The Pantawid Pamilya program, Arroyo said, will provide cash grants to 321,000 poorest households.
