Left behind: Group decries ‘neglect’ of SUCs in House 2024 budget realignments

A group on Tuesday, Nov. 14, decried the “neglect” of State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) by the House of Representatives in the realignments it made on the proposed 2024 national budget.

“It seems our representatives have failed to see and heed the clamour of our iskolar ng bayan who, until now, are under hybrid learning modalities due to abject shortages in classrooms and other facilities,” said Alliance of Concerned Teachers State Colleges and Universities (ACT SUCs) said President Carl Marc Ramota in a statement.

Ramota, who is also the University of the Philippines (UP) Faculty Regent, said that the realignment also “failed to address” the government’s outstanding responsibility to 59 percent of the college-aged youth who are out of school.

“Our public universities practically did not benefit from the P194.5 billion realignments made by the House of Representatives to the 2024 budget as even the more than P6 billion slashed budgets in SUCs were not restored,” Ramota explained.

He noted that of the P1.4 billion fund addition to SUCs, more than P1 billion will go to the Philippine General Hospital, leaving a mere P300 million for other SUCs, which is “plainly pitiful if not insignificant.”

With this, the group said that it is setting its sights now on the Senate, which “purportedly agreed” to get rid of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) in the 2024 budget.

“After the House stripped some civilian agencies of a total of P1.2 billion in confidential funds, some P9 billion of CIF remain intact in the 2024 budget,” Ramota said.

“We call on the Senate to make it up to our youth by redirecting the remaining CIF to our public universities,” he added.

To lobby mobilization for a higher budget, Ramota said that students, faculty, and staff from the UP, Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), Philippine Normal University (PNU), Eulogio Amang Rodriguez Institute of Science and Technology (EARIST), and Technological University of the Philippines (TUP) will rally at the Senate gates on Nov. 15 to urge Senators to heed their demands.