Gov’t releases another funding for school infra

The national government has released funding for provision and maintenance of basic education buildings as well as water and sanitation facilities, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said.

Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad, said the government has disbursed 11.2 billion to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which also covers maintenance for elementary and secondary schools, and technical- vocational laboratories.

The amount, sourced from the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Basic Education Facilities Fund in the 2016 General Appropriations Act (GAA), was released to DPWH in accordance with their role as the official construction arm of the government.

“In 2014, we closed the classroom gap we inherited and we’ve built over 86,000 classrooms since 2010,” Abad said in a statement.

“This latest release is the next step towards ensuring that Filipino students have ample room to learn, given the implementation of the K to 12 program and the growing population of students,” he added.

The breakdown for the release, broken down into four batches, saw 10.43 billion allotted towards school buildings and 365 million for technical-vocational laboratories.

While the infrastructure will be constructed by DPWH, DepEd will identify and prescribe the standards and specifications of these buildings.

“DPWH and DepEd will work together to design plans for these infrastructure projects. We want to ensure that any public works resulting from this release must be environment friendly and built at an efficient cost,” Abad said.

Aside from the four batches of releases for education infrastructure, DBM also released 523.56 million for the provision of school furniture, including desks and other fixtures, for newly constructed school buildings.

In September, 2015, the DBM has also released 9.41 billion to DPWH to build 6,098 classrooms in 956 high schools nationwide for DepEd.

According to Abad, the fund release will increase the capacity of public high schools as well as accommodate the rising number of students each year.

Of the 15 regions, Region IV- A (CALABARZON) will have the highest allocation with 2.17 billion to build 1,349 classrooms. This is followed by NCR with 1.29 billion for 751 classrooms and Region VI with 1.2 billion for 835 classrooms.