P8 billion needed to repair schools damaged by calamities

MANILA, Philippines — The budget needed to repair schools damaged by various calamities that hit the country since 2017 has ballooned to a whopping P8 billion, according to an official of the Department of Education (DepEd).

Education Undersecretary for Administration Alain Del Pascua said funds needed to repair calamity-struck schools almost doubled following the series of strong earthquakes that struck parts of Mindanao last month.

“Our deficit for calamity-related replacement damages would reach something like P8 billion,” he told The STAR in Filipino. “For Mindanao, it’s already P4 billion.”

Latest data from DepEd showed that P3.4 billion is needed to rehabilitate or reconstruct more than 1,000 schools that collapsed or sustained major damages following the earthquakes.

In Kidapawan City that was heavily struck by the tremors, Mayor Joseph Evangelista said they need at least P300 million to repair the schools that sustained damage.

“I hope it will be given priority for the 2020 budget,” he said, noting that they had to establish temporary learning spaces to be able to resume classes.

But given the backlog of schools that need to be repaired, Pascua said some of those that have recently sustained damages may have to wait a little longer.

“Our Quick Response Fund next year is P2 billion, according to Congress and Senate. It will be depleted immediately by January [when the new budget takes effect]. It will not be enough,” said the education official. 

Asked if it would be possible to lodge the funding requirement on the regular budget, Pascua said the agency also has an existing plan on where to build new classrooms.

“We were asking for (a budget for) 67,000 classrooms, but they only gave us something for 8,000,” he said, referring to the proposed 2020 budget.

“That is the problem. We have to prioritize because there are some that experiences shortages in classrooms,” he added.

Earlier, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said they have already requested the National Disaster Coordinating Council to allocate funds for the reconstruction of the schools damaged by the quake.

Education Undersecretary for Finance Annalyn Sevilla said they are also asking the Department of Budget and Management for supplemental QRF to cover the repair of the affected schools.

She said they also have the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Service operational fund that they use for clean-up, temporary learning spaces and other minor repairs

Latest data showed that 757 temporary learning spaces worth P64.5 million have been established in 189 schools to allow classes to resume despite the damaged buildings.

Another P30 million have been released for clean-up, psychological first aid and emergency feeding.

Amid the ballooning requirement needed to repair calamity-damaged schools, a teachers’ group has scored the government for the problems encountered in the ongoing Southeast Asian Games despite the huge budget allocation it received.

“The government would rather squander billions on unproductive infrastructures like the P55M cauldron than invest on human resource development,” Alliance of Concerned Teachers chairperson Joselyn Martinez said on Tuesday.

“To our athletes, we feel you, we share the same feeling of being neglected as this regime continue to fail in fulfilling its pay hike promise to teachers,” she added.

Martinez noted that the government has only allotted P31 billion for the salary increase of 1.5 million government workers, saying it would not even amount to a fifth of their call for an increase of base pay to P30,000 per month.

“Ours is not an excessive demand but an assertion for an opportunity to live on decent standards and for our profession to be dignified,” she said.

“More importantly, it is a call to justly spend the people’s coffers for human resource development that would bring genuine progress to the country,” she added.

Martinez said the SEA Games spending, particularly the P55-million cauldron, reflects the government’s supposed penchant for over-priced infrastructures that would have little benefit to the lives of the Filipinos.

“It is beyond comprehension why despite the government’s failures to even deliver on its infrastructure targets, it still got the lion’s share of the budget,” she said.

“On the other hand, they say that they cannot afford to give us substantial salary increase while it is sure to boost service delivery and uplift the lives of its own workers,” added Martinez.

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