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Thursday, February 2, 2017
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ILOILO City – Smartphones and glowing sticks forming the words “Free Education Now” highlighted the picket of millennials in front of West Visayas State University in La Paz district calling for the immediate implementation of President Rodrigo Duterte’s free tuition policy promise.
Congress appropriated a total of P8.3 billion supplemental budget to cover the tuition of around 1.4 million students of state universities and colleges (SUCs) for school year 2017-2018.
The General Appropriation Act of 2017 Special Provision No. 1 says “starting the first semester of SY 2017-2018, no tuition fee shall be collected from all undergraduate students.”
“We welcome this move by our legislators. However, the Filipino youth must continue the struggle for quality and accessible education,” said Bryan Bosque, Anakbayan-Panay spokesperson, on Jan. 27.
The free tuition policy was just an “initial victory” of the youth, said Bosque, after decades of collective action for the right to education.
Meanwhile, Kabataan partylist Panay spokesperson JC Alejandro urged the youth to remain vigilant for there were no guidelines yet regarding the implementation of the free tuition policy.
According to Alejandro, without the implementing guidelines from the Department of Budget and Management and the Commission on Higher Education, there could be adjunct interpretations of President Rodrigo Duterte’s statement regarding the “conditional implementation” of the provision.
“It is a challenge to all the Filipino youth to monitor and take actions on the next steps of the Department of Budget and Management and CHED,” Alejandro said. “We must assert the swift and fair implementation of this historic furtherance of tuition-free policy in SUCs.”/PN
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