Press Release
September 14, 2008

GORDON: GOV'T NEEDS P18-B FOR EDUCATION AND HEALTH NEEDS

The government needs at least Php 18 billion to address the country's ballooning backlogs in education and health infrastructures which has sent the nation's educational system in a dismal state, Senator Richard J. Gordon said yesterday.

Gordon said there is an urgent need to improve the condition of the country's educational system today with the staggering shortages in classrooms, school facilities and educational materials, the shortage of teachers in public schools, and the poor performance of students.

"With the dismal state of the country's educational system, we need to take a big leap forward and make our public education system catch up to present demands," he said.

The country suffers from a shortage of 12,418 classrooms at the cost of P6.95 billion; 1,744,237 school seats at P1.39 billion; 44,200,000 textbooks at P2.78 billion; 12,733 teachers at P2.48 billion and an additional P25 million for their training; and 24,709 principals at P4.43 billion.

Gordon said a total of P18.28 billion is needed to fund backlogs in education infrastructure. But with the scarce government resources, he continued, there is a need to come up with new ways to generate the necessary funds for education modernization programs.

"These are roadblocks that keep us from moving forward. With the scarce resources of the national government, there is a need to be innovative in our approach in harnessing investments for education and health modernization programs," Gordon said.

In authoring Senate Bill (SB) 2402, Gordon said he is proposing the creation of the Health and Education Acceleration Program (HEAP) Corporation that would focus on addressing the scarcity of funds needed for education and health infrastructures.

Under SB 2402, every commercial mobile service provider shall be required to remit to the HEAP fund half or 50% of its net revenue earnings arising from short message system (SMS).

From an estimated 400 million text messages sent per day with each text message at the cost of P1.00, half of which or P0.50 would go to the HEAP Corporation, Gordon projected that the government would be able to collect some P73 billion in one year alone.

He said that since the Corporation will serve as the procuring agency for the acquisition of materials needed by the Department of Education (DepEd), public school teachers would be unburdened and be allowed to focus on their teaching profession itself.

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