Students slam CHED for supporting TRAIN law

A militant student group yesterday slammed the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for supporting the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law.

The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) said the TRAIN law has been a burden to millions of Filipino families affected by the increase in prices of basic commodities.

“By supporting Duterte’s TRAIN law, CHED only wants to make the overall cost of education more expensive,” the group said in a statement.

“It aims to drive more students out of schools and create more dropouts. These unfortunate youth are bound to be offered cheap, semi-skilled and docile labor and compete with millions of unemployed Filipinos for low-paying jobs as contractual workers,” it added.

Earlier this week, CHED officer-in-charge J. Prospero de Vera III expressed support for the TRAIN law, saying it enables the government to fund the free higher education policy to be implemented starting this year.

De Vera said the initiative directly puts P16 billion in the pockets of the families of some 1.3 million students who will receive free tuition, miscellaneous and other school-related fees.

“Filipino families whose children are benefitting from free higher education can now spend their money for other household needs,” he said. –