News Release
March 24, 2010
Students from the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) today merged their protest actions to seek emergency allocation from the government for state colleges and universities.
UP students from the Diliman, Los Banos, Baguio and Manila campuses held a rally this morning to block the UP Board of Regents from approving additional fees in the university, including a P100 hike in PE fees and P1,000 to P2,500 per unit hike in graduate classes.
The students were able to successfully block two UP regents from entering Quezon Hall resulting in a lack of quorum for the BOR meeting.
According to Rain Sindayen, Chairperson-elect of the UP Diliman University Student Council, “This is an initial victory for UP students. The main issue here is that the BOR has no right to table or vote on the proposed fees in the absence of a student representative in the BOR.” The UP BOR unjustly ousted UP Student Regent Charice Banez last month on trumped up technicalities. As a result, students have been stripped of representation in the BOR.
By lunchtime, the UP students welcomed the contingent from 21 PUP campuses nationwide in a rally in front of the Commission on Higher Education office inside the UP campus to protest the 1,700 percent tuition hike proposal in PUP.
Sindayen said, “They have done it in UP but we will not allow the passing of the absurd tuition hike in PUP. We call on all Iskolars ng Bayan to unite.” The UP BOR had already increased tuition in UP in 2006 from P300 to P1,000 per unit.
Emergency budget allocation
“We demand an emergency budget allocation for state colleges and universities to prevent these tuition increases from being implemented. Poor budget allocation for state colleges and universities has resulted in school administrations’ passing on the burden to students,” said Vencer Crisostomo, Kabataan Partylist Secretary-General.
Crisostomo said that the past ten years saw a consistent decrease in the budget allocation for SUCs in line with the state policy of privatization and commercialization of education. “The government has been gradually washing its hands off of the responsibility to subsidize public education. As a result, SUCs are resorting to income-generating schemes and commercial ventures with private entities at the expense of students,” Crisostomo said.
“UP, for instance, requested for P18 billion in the 2010 budget but was granted barely P6 billion. PUP, on the other hand, suffered another budget slash from its 2009 budget at P704 million to P661 million in 2010,” Crisostomo said.
All major SUCs, he added, have zero budgets for capital outlay which is supposed to be earmarked for their operational expenses. “To compensate for these losses, school administrations are hiking tuitions. An emergency allocation for SUCs is imperative to stop tuition hikes,” he said.
Meanwhile, almost 250 private schools have also submitted their proposal to the CHED for tuition hikes as high as 20 percent.
A nationwide protest against tuition increases is set on March 29, coinciding with the PUP BOR meeting scheduled to approve the PUP tuition hike. ###
—
Office of Rep. Raymond ‘Mong’ Palatino
Temporary Office at 3rd Floor, Main Building
House of Representatives, Batasan Complex, Quezon City
Reference:
Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino
Gerg Anrol Cahiles, Media Officer
