By Merlina Hernando-Malipot  The Department of Education (DepEd) clarified that the reported “unutilized” textbooks were “buffer stocks” meant to be used to replace damaged or lost materials in case of calamities, or to be distributed to schools in case there would be an increase in enrollment. Education Secretary Leonor Briones (SCREENSHOT / RTVM / MANILA BULLETIN) Education Secretary Leonor Briones shared DepEd’s responses to the Commission on Audit’s (COA) 2018 Annual Audit Report in a recent a meeting with the Senate Committee on Basic Education, Arts, and Culture attended by committee chair Senator Sherwin Gatchalian and members Senators Pia Cayetano and Nancy Binay. Briones explained that the said the COA itself noted that "DepEd has an alarming number of undistributed instructional materials amounting to P113,708,595.00 as buffer stock from CYs 2014 up to 2017." Buffer stock, she said, “refers to the efforts of the Department that whenever there are natural calamities, whenever there are earthquakes, whenever books are destroyed, then we have stocks on hand.” As stipulated in DepEd Order no. 46, s. 2010, or the Policies and Guidelines on the Allocation of Textbooks and Teacher’s Manuals, a “buffer stock shall be provided for textbooks (TXs) and teacher’s manuals (TMs) equivalent to 10 percent of the projected enrollment of the school year when these will be delivered.” Thus, the buffer stock shall “answer for replacements for losses and/or damages of TXs, for increase in enrolment, and for meeting the requirements of newly established/created schools.” During the hearing, Briones also cited instances when buffer stocks “were sent immediately” – such as when a school in Dumaguete City was burned and when there was a report about a far-flung school that did not have textbooks. Based on the latest inventory of the Bureau of Learning Resources (BLR), DepEd noted that there are 137 titles – which are in the mother tongue – with buffer stocks in the warehouse. “By simple average, the buffer stock for each title is just close to 25,000 pieces per title,” DepEd said. “The actual inventory of buffer stock for each title ranges from 10 pieces to 179,000,” the agency added. Briones further said that if the simple average cost per unit is taken based on the amount of P113.7 million and 3.4 million pieces – this amounts to a unit cost of only P33.34. DepEd also noted that from 2016 to 2018, DepEd delivered 81,892,080 textbooks of various titles nationwide. “The 3.4 million buffer stock cited by COA constitutes just 4.2 percent of the total deliveries,” the agency. Meanwhile, Briones noted that as part of DepEd’s continuing efforts to make systems on textbooks more responsive, she has “approved the authority to procure the hauling and delivery of a large portion of these inventory of buffer stocks to the Division offices and to preposition them nearer to places of need as early as end of February this year.” This, she added, is to “also avoid logistical constraints that hampered DepEd to immediately deploy buffer stocks in times of calamities in the past.” Aside from prepositioning buffer stocks locally, Briones explained that DepEd “will also allocate a portion” of these buffer stocks for the Last Mile Schools Program. She also reiterated the initiatives of the DepEd to “a more proactive system of delivering textbooks.” Read more: DepEd chief questions COA’s claims of textbook ‘errors’