Gov’t urged to allocate portion of ‘sin tax’ for public schools

With only one doctor for every 147,000 students and an annual medicine budget of a measly P1.50 per student, public schools should be given a portion of “sin tax” collections, a senior administration lawmaker said yesterday.

Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, chairman of the House committee on higher and technical education, said the allocation of a portion of proceeds from excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol products for the hiring of school-based health personnel will be the “shot- in- the- arm” that will boost the capability of public school clinics to extend health services to “practically onefifth of the country’s population.”

He said the move will benefit 22.1 million public school students.

“Just allocating five percent of the annual excise tax and value-added tax (VAT) collections on liquor and cigarettes will address the chronic lack of doctors and medicine in public schools,” Angara said.

“If one of the major reasons for hiking sin taxes is for government to have more money for health, then there is no better place to spend this than in public schools where 20 percent of the country congregate during daytime,” he said.

Excise tax and VAT proceeds from “sin products” are seen to hit P70 billion this year but are expected to soar to at least P100 billion annually once the bill approved by the House of Representatives increasing taxes on these hurdles the Senate and is then signed into law by President Aquino.

“Earmarking five percent or P5 billion of this will be more than a good start to put more doctors, nurses, dentists, equipment and medicine in school clinics,” Angara said.

On top of the 22.1 million students, public schools also host half- amillion teachers.

Despite this sheer size, a Department of Education ( DepEd) report showed the number of “medical officers” in public schools at 150, dentists at 617 and nurses at 3254, he said.

With no “hiring surge” for this kind of personnel authorized over the past five years, the lawmaker said “it is safe to assume this remains the size of the medical corps that attend to the health needs of our schoolchildren.”

“Clearly having one dentist for every 36,000 students is not enough,” Angara said, citing the result of a 2006 oral health survey commissioned by the DepEd, which showed that 97 percent of six -year olds and 82 percent of 12- year olds had tooth decay.