Press Release
September 25, 2009

ANGARA EYES MORE FUNDS FOR SCHOOL BUILDING

Senator Edgardo J. Angara today urged Department of Education (DepEd) to focus and invest more on school building.

"The shortage in the number of public school buildings to accommodate the increasing number of enrollees in our public schools, associated with the deteriorating quality of our education system, has always been a perennial problem," said Angara who chairs the Senate Committee on Finance.

The proposed obligation program of the Department of Education for FY 2010 amounts to P 172.843 Billion.

A total of P 6.4 Billion is allocated for the School Building Program where P 1.6 Billion will be used to build 2,462 classrooms for elementary and secondary schools experiencing severe classroom shortage.

P 2.262 Billion is earmarked for the construction, repair and rehabilitation of 3,756 classrooms, 2,755 water sanitation facilities and science and internet laboratories.

He added, "In Senate Bill 911 which I filed seeks to create a comprehensive program which will address the problem of classroom shortage. A salient feature of this bill is the provision of build-operate-transfer, build-lease-transfer, build-transfer, rehabilitate-operate-transfer, and other contractual arrangements that will allow the use of both government and private funds to finance the construction of needed school buildings, and the creation of an inter-agency committee to formulate and ensure the effective implementation and to provide the integration of all the necessary information for the effective monitoring and maintenance of existing school buildings."

"I hope that with your cooperation and further efforts and the passage of this bill, class sizes will be reduced to a manageable and ideal proportion level for a more conductive learning environment and thus result in the improvement of the quality of our education," ended Angara.

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