Over 400 former higher education institutions (HEI) employees, who were displaced because of the K to 12 program, are now at risk of losing their financial aid from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
This after the DOLE’s Assistance Measure Program received a budget of only P10 million for this year. Under the AMP, the DOLE provides a temporary cash aid to HEI workers, who lost their job because of the effects of the K to 12 program.
In a phone interview, DOLE’s Bureau of Local Employment Director Dominique R. Tutay told the BusinessMirror that their current AMP budget is insufficient to cover for the needs of the remaining 450 AMP beneficiaries.
“P10 million is not enough. For January alone, we will already need P13 million for the AMP beneficiaries,” Tutay said.
She added they already requested for supplemental funding to raise their AMP budget for 2018 to P81 million.
“We will also need this, since we are targeting to accommodate another 345 HEI employees this year through the AMP. I am confident our request will be granted,” Tutay said.
In a separate interview, DOLE Financial and Management Service Director Warren M. Miclat said there is an existing P150-million budget for the AMP in the 2018 General Appropriations Act.
“But this is for later release from the DBM [Department of Budget and Management]. This means this will not be released unless requested,” Miclat said.
The DOLE decided to trim down its budget request for the AMP this year in anticipation of the phaseout of the program by 2022. The AMP has a regular budget allocation of P500 million from 2015, when it was first implemented, up to 2017.
The DOLE drew criticisms from lawmakers in previous budget deliberations, since it was only able to use a small fraction of the large AMP budget.
In the last three years the DOLE was only able to spend around P100 million to provide temporary cash aid to 600 displaced HEIs employees. Out of these beneficiaries 147 were already able to graduate from AMP.
Tutay attributed the underutilization of the AMP fund to the lower-than-expected displacement caused by the K to 12 program.
She said the P500-million budget was based on the “worst-case scenario” projection of the Department of Education (DepEd), wherein around 12,000 HEIs personnel will lose their jobs during the transition phase for K to 12.
The bulk of displacement was anticipated to be registered in 2016 and 2017, when enrollment in HEIs will be at its lowest as the DepEd has started implementing its Senior High program.
However, as of January, the DOLE said only around 1,400 HEI employees lost their jobs because of the K to 12 program.
Tutay noted the remaining 800 of the displaced workers, who did not avail of the AMP, were hired by the DepEd or have applied for the scholarship program of the Commission on Higher Education.
“Some of them were also employed in other schools, or they decided to change careers,” she said.