Palace urged to sign scholarship law with intact budget

MALACAÑANG was asked to sign into law the Congress- approved Medical Scholarship Bill to enable Congress to provide adequate funds in next year’s national budget in order to ensure its early implementation, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph G. Recto suggested over the weekend.

Recto indicated, however, he was relegating to the backburner a companion proposal to name the scholarship after former barrio doctor-turned Senator Juan Flavier, who originally pushed for the Doctors to the Barrios program as Secretary of Health prior to his election to the Senate.

“But before we attach his great name to a great program, let us first make sure that the law’s maiden year of implementation is not marked by a budget cut,” the senator said.

The Senate President Pro Tempore recalled reports on Malacañang’s plan to cut in half this year’s P167-million financial subsidy to 1,789 medical scholars to P83.5 million next year, as proposed by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) in the 2021 budget bill.

Recto rued that worse, according to CHED, this year’s P167-million financial stipend to medical students in eight state universities has been impounded “for later release.”

According to the senator, among those affected include the Bicol University, Cagayan State University, Mariano Marcos State University, Mindanao State University, University of Northern Philippines, UP Manila College of Medicine, UP Manila School of Health Sciences, and Western Visayas State University.

“So embargoed ngayon; cut bukas, [Embargoed today, cut tomorrow.]” Recto lamented.

At the same time, Recto reminded that the CHED scholarship program in eight SUCS is but one of the tracks the Congress-approved bill creates in producing doctors whose services are needed in the provinces, of which only 25 out of 81 have enough public doctors.

He added that another program is run by the Department of Health (DOH), which had 1,142 scholars in various medical schools last year.

The senator pointed out that under their contract, “they shall repay their state-granted tuition and allowances by serving in rural areas” after passing the board examinations.

“So more or less, the CHED and DOH tracks have a combined 3,000 beneficiaries. [Let’s increase this] by including financially-challenged but academically excelling medicine students in private schools,” he added.

Recto said that besides the late Senator Juan Flavier, who once served as Senate President Pro Tempore, “there are other names in the constellation of Filipino MD greats to choose from.”

For instance, he suggested the Eastern Visayas scholarship “could be named after Dr. Bobby de la Paz, while another region could be renamed in memory of Dr. Fe del Mundo, a Harvard-trained pediatrician who went home to serve Filipinos for 80 years.”

De la Paz, on the other hand was a UP-PGH trained doctor who left a potentially lucrative big city practice for Samar, where he ran primary health-care programs until he was assassinated inside his Catbalogan clinic in April 1982.

Recto reminded that even among Covid-19 heroes, “there are lots of names in the honor roll to choose from.”

Noting that naming scholarship programs “after people who distinguished themselves in a profession is done in many countries,” Recto reminded, however, that “unlike the Fulbright scholarship in the US and the Rhodes in England, our medical scholarship will not be named after benefactors, but after Filipino role models.”