The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) sent its apologies through a statement on Christmas, following the delay of the release of allowances of government scholars.
“The Commission acknowledges that the delays have caused pain to our scholars, many of whom rely on the living allowances for the daily subsistence of their families,” CHED Chairperson Patricia B.
Licuanan said.
According to CHED, aside from the K to 12 transition, the delays are caused by five factors which are: the volume of documents, issues and discrepancies in documentary requirements, additional requirements prescribed by the Commission on Audit (COA), delays in the submission of these additional requirements, and the internal system of CHED.
The statement stressed that the CHED internal system was “not designed to take in the large scaled of scholarship administration, taking in more than 4,000 scholars per year under the K to 12 Transition Program alone, and on top of student scholarship, institutional support, and research grants that the Commission undertakes.”
Licuanan, however, assured that CHED is currently undertaking and fast-tracking steps to address these issues which include the hiring of additional manpower to process more than 11,000 sets of documents, quality checks to detect discrepancies, and to improve coordination with regional offices and communication with scholars.
“These steps have improved the release of allowances to the batch of scholars approved in 2017. Furthermore, the allowance for scholars approved in 2016 is being fast-tracked by the Central Office,” the statement read.
“The Commission has processed documents of 2,152 scholars in the last three weeks, whose documents have been found fully compliant of the guidelines, and their allowance are expected to be released before the year ends,” it added.
CHED is also extending help for the 1,011 who have yet to complete their requirements, allowing a partial release of their allowance on January 5, as long as they submit their deficiencies by January 10.
Meanwhile, those 933 that have not complied are asked to submit first for their papers to be processed.
CHED also asked for an extended patience.
“The Commission recognized the stop-gap efforts are not enough and we apologize to the scholars for our shortcomings. Longer-term structural reforms should be implemented to sustainably address the perennial problem of delays in releases,” Licuana said.
A public tracker is available on CHED’s website to aid scholars in monitoring their status.