Northern Samar 1st district Rep. Paul Daza has some choice words for Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) Chairman Prospero de Vera III on the issue of the agency's alleged poor utilization of the Higher Education Development Fund (HEDF). "I maintain my position that Chairman De Vera is not a responsible steward of the resources to uplift our country’s most vulnerable citizens - the poorest of the poor," Daza said in a statement. "In a recent hearing of the [CHEd] at the House of Representatives, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) disclosed in 2019 they submitted to CHEd over one million Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) students to the CHEd but only 7,000 were given support. Nakakadurog ng puso (It crushes my heart)," he said. Daza's main gripe against De Vera is the "short-changing" of Filipinos over the supposed non-use of the HEDF. "I have serious concerns regarding the utilization of this fund. Data shows that P10 billion of the 2021 HEDF remains unspent, sitting idly in the coffers," said the senior deputy minority leader. "With all due respect to the good chairperson: if there are funds that were allocated for a purpose, yet were not spent to fulfill this purpose, then this is a case of mismanagement. It may look good on paper that the CHEd did not spend P10 billion, but the real consequence of that is the Filipino people were short-changed P10 billion because it was not used to serve their needs," he said. "This year, the DSWD said that over 700,000 more senior high school students under the 4Ps program are graduating to, hopefully, venture into college or university. At the rate the CHEd is going, I fear that not even one percent of these poor students will get support from the government," claimed Daza. He further interpreted the poor usage of HEDF as a "lack of compassion" on the part of the De Vera-led agency. "I have defended the budget of the CHEd for the past couple of years, in the august halls of Congress, during those grueling yet important budget hearings...After seeing their underutilization of this budget–which also equates to, in my mind, a lack of compassion–I can’t help but regret taking up the cudgels for them in the House," he said. Daza said he believes CHEd is a key agency in giving the poor more opportunities to escape poverty, especially after it was empowered by Republic Act (RA) No.10931 or The Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act. "I hope that the good chairperson would find it in his heart to use the power and responsibility that he was given to answer the plight of the poor, underprivileged, and undereducated," he said. The veteran solon further said of De Vera: "He can implement creative solutions to reallocate the unspent funds to fill a dire need for those under the 4Ps; not just for their tuition fees but also for their needs in their daily lives as students. Let’s come together with the same lens, through the eyes of the poorest Filipinos."