A GROUP of school administrators called on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to help them collect from the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) payments due them during the three semesters of the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES) under the Unified Student Financial Assistance Program for Tertiary Education (UniFAST).

In an open letter to Marcos and other government officials, a copy which was obtained by The Manila Times, the school authorities said the Universal Access to Tertiary Education Act (Republic Act 10931) which was signed in 2017 provides poor students free tuition when they enroll in state universities and colleges (SUCs), CHEdrecognized local universities and colleges (LUCs), and staterun technical and vocational institutions (STVIs).

The students are given P20,000 per semester for their tuition, which is equivalent to the tuition of the nearest SUC and STVI.

The TES also covers allowances for books, supplies, transportation and other miscellaneous personal expenses.

The officials said the new grantees began encountering problems starting academic year 2021-2022.

“An average of two semesters were unpaid, and this resulted in [the] delay in the payment of salaries of schoolteachers, utilities, bank obligations, and other fees, educational expenses and cost of living,” they said.

The administrators also claimed the CHEd refuses to hear their side regarding the delay in payment, which is a violation of the Ease of Doing Business Act of 2018.

They said the student grantees and their parents are blaming them for the delay.

Agapito Lubaton, chief executive officer and administrator of the Marvelous College of Technology Inc., a private community college in Koronadal City, South Cotabato, wrote a letter to Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman requesting her to process the release of payments under the UniFAST program.

Lubaton said his school has been asking CHEd Chairman Prospero de Vera 3rd and UniFAST Officer in Charge Ryan Estevez to facilitate the processing of the payments incurred for taking in the students under the UniFAST program, but the officials told them that there were no budgetary allocations for the program for academic years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023.

“From the start of Estevez’s administration, partnering with de Vera, the funding got messed-up,” Lubaton said.

Lubaton said Estevez told them no funds can be released from the TES because of the election spending ban, and even right after the elections, due to adjustments made by the new administration. He said he wanted to know why the budget for UniFAST is being withheld, since it was included in the General Appropriations Act.

Maria Grace de los Santos, director of the Budget and Management Bureau-F which supervises the budget of CHEd, said that under the 2021 and 2022 national budgets, P70.342 billion was allocated for the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education (UAQTE) law, P43.99 billion of which was for the TES.

De los Santos explained that pursuant to the Special Provision 3 of the CHEd Budget under the 2021 and 2022 national budgets, the “UniFAST Board shall administer the amount appropriated for the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education (UAQTE) which shall cover tuition and other school fees for FYs 2021 and 2022.”

Lubaton said that during their discussions with de Vera and Estevez, the two claimed that the DBM has cut the budget for UAQTE, and there was no allocation for the TES program of UniFAST from 20212022 and 2022-2023.

“We are asking now: Where is the money? This has been two years already and it is the third year already,” he said.

Lubaton said Estevez was placed in charge of the UniFAST program despite his lack of experience in handling issues concerning the education sector.

“In the previous administration, we just kept calling [the previous officers] and they give us the information on how it will be processed. For three years, the implementation was smooth, we only experienced these problems now,” he said.

He added that other schools are also having a problem concerning payments under UniFAST.

Lubaton and fellow school administrators said they might consider filing a case against de Vera and Estevez in the Office of the Ombudsman if the issue is not resolved soon.