110 schools protest CHED ban on costly sports meets

Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chairman Emmanuel Angeles III is on a collision course with the heads of the 110 state universities and colleges (SUCs) as he attempts to stop state schools from holding expensive sports activities.

Dr. Lauro Tacbas, president of the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges (PASUC), an association of the presidents of the 110 SUCs supervised by CHED, said the schools cannot cancel the holding of the sports tournaments scheduled this January and February despite an order from Angeles to do so.

“We cannot stop these sports meets. We will push through with them,” Tacbas told The Star in an interview at the Rizal Technological University where the PASUC yesterday held a meeting to discuss the request of Angeles to postpone all PASUC activities, including sports meets in the remaining months of the current academic year.

 Tacbas said that PASUC had reached a consensus in their meeting to strongly oppose Angeles’ directive.

Angeles, in a press briefing at the CHED head office Monday, said he had instructed SUCs to refrain from holding expensive multi-million athletic meets to save funds to improve the facilities and equipment of state schools.

Angeles revealed that he had discovered that many SUCs had allocated shockingly huge amounts of funds to hold these athletic tournaments. – Rainier Allan Ronda