CH withheld payment for ACT

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City Government is withholding the payment of P60 million to the Asian College of Technology (ACT) owned by Councilor Rodrigo Abellanosa due to an ongoing tax examination to which all participating schools of the city’s scholarship program are being subjected to.

Councilor Jose Daluz III said that the tax examination is part of the accreditation process among schools that will get to participate in the program.

The city still has P60 million payables to ACT covering two semesters during the last academic year.

ACT has over 3,000 scholars, which is almost half the total number of the city’s scholars.

Councilor Rodrigo Abellanosa confirmed that he has millions of collectibles from the city, but said that he will not demand for payment.

Abellanosa said that he never demanded ever since because he understands the sluggish process.

The councilor-businessman said he will just wait for the city to release the payment.

Daluz said that only ACT has collectibles from the city because other schools have already complied with the requirements of the City Treasurer’s Office.

“Maybe ACT has not opened its books of accounts, I don’t know. But the treasurer informed me that ACT and all the schools is undergoing tax examination and that the other schools have already complied,” Daluz said.

There are 21 participating schools for the scholarship program. All city scholars are entitled to P10,000 scholarship per semester which is paid directly to schools.

Last week, the city paid Cebu Technological University over P1 million after the latter refused to enroll the city scholars until the payment is settled.

Daluz said that ACT did not threaten to deny the city scholars of enrollment.

In fact, as early as March, ACT has started recruiting scholars to enroll in the school.

This is one reason why the city government could not implement this year the ceiling on the number of scholars that may enroll in each participating school.

The scholarship committee created a policy where in the number of scholars allowed to enroll in a participating school must depend on the amount of taxes the schools are paying.

The more taxes a school pays to the city government, the more scholars may enroll in that particular school. The committee created such policy to address the disparity in the enrollment of scholars where only few schools are observed to be benefiting from the program.

ACT gets the most number of scholars among the 21 participating schools.

“Unsaon pa man nato pag-implement nga tua naman kasagaran didto. As early as March pa gud, niingon na ang ACT na the students have to enroll by April to avail of the scholarship ni Bebot, (How will we implement when most of them are already enrolled at ACT? As early as March, ACT already imposed that students have to enroll by April to avail of Bebot’s scholarship.)” Daluz said.

ACT offers a counter scholarship program so the city scholars will no longer pay a single peso in tuition fees.

Daluz said that next year, they will implement a policy that city scholars should be the last to enroll also for better monitoring.  (FREEMAN)