Education, taxes, and pork barrel

Soon, classes will start. It will be a reluctant goodbye to the merry month of May and an anxious hello to June. Students will have to shift from a vacation mode to a study mode.

Reunions and fiestas, like the Holy Trinity celebration in Loay last Sunday, will be memories to be treasured. Bohol will finally end its endless days of fiestas this May 31st.

There may be a significant number of our children who may not be able to enroll in June because of tuition fee hikes approved for 1,257 schools. In certain rural areas, it is reported that due to high school classroom shortage, some 4.6 million youths may not be able to enroll.

Expect more woes related to school opening from now on and the finger-pointing about who is responsible for education and related problems.

Budget allocation for education has improved during the PNoy administration but so much more are needed to effectively respond to the challenges related to education and other welfare services for our people.

Tax collection in this administration has also improved. The latest news shows that BIR collected more revenues this year, 28.2 per cent more than last year. April collection showed P393.051 billion, up by 13.8 percent.

While we should be happy that slowly but surely the BIR is more successfully able to collect more revenues, we remain skeptical about where the collected revenues will go and how these will be used and prioritized.

How much of the revenues will end up in the pork barrel allocation of those in Congress? Zero, we hope, for the sake of all Filipinos, especially the hungry 3.9 million and the rest of the poor and needy. We hope and pray, once and for all, that those in Congress will not be given their pork barrel at all from this year.

If this prayer and hope is not granted yet this year, then we pray as well that the PNoy administration will rationalize the amount, the allocation and use of the pork barrel by providing clear guidelines about how the people's funds should be used. Clearly, the mandate should be that the people's funds should be returned back to the people, for their welfare, the funds to serve our people, especially the poor and the needy.

Is it possible for PNoy to instruct DBM that the pork barrel should only be used this year, first, for anti-hunger projects (including food production schemes) and then also for education and health provision? Is it possible to release funds only for these welfare purposes and with clear beneficiaries and monitoring schemes that should be complied with, otherwise the pork barrel allocation for subsequent periods will not be released?

If only the limited funds of our country were spent for the welfare needs of our people first, then there will be less or no hungry Filipinos in the next round of surveys, there will be more employed with stable incomes, there will be less homeless, more educated, more schools, more qualified teachers, more affordable and accessible hospitals.

If the PNoy government can rationalize, control, and redirect the use of pork barrel for the use and welfare of millions of Filipinos rather than the few privileged in Congress, then next year's news will no longer carry the same old tune of the woes of education and our people.

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