MAY 29 (Eagle News) — Public school students nationwide face a shortage of more than 67,000 classrooms on Monday, June 1, when classes open for the new school year 2015-2016, and a lawmaker is pinning the blame on government’s underspending for this problem.
Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Party-List representative Antonio Tinio said that Congress has allotted a big chunk of the government budget to the Department of Education (DepEd) but that the problem was the failure to implement several school building projects.
Tinio said only 7,062 classrooms as of April 2015 have been built by the education department although it had been given funds worth more than P30 billion, which was the approved budget for the building of 43,183 classrooms.
He said the actual shortage is 67,849 classrooms.
Tinio said that the DepEd had only met 16 percent of the 43,183 classrooms targeted by its 2014 budget of P37.67 billion under the Basic Education Facilities Fund for Construction of Classrooms provision.