{"id":91829,"date":"2017-03-01T01:13:36","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T06:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=91829"},"modified":"2017-03-01T01:13:36","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T06:13:36","slug":"gatchalian-confident-of-passage-of-free-tuition-in-sucs-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/03\/01\/gatchalian-confident-of-passage-of-free-tuition-in-sucs-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Gatchalian confident of passage of free tuition in SUCs bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""The<\/a>
“The Free Higher Education for All Act continues to enjoy widespread support among senators, including our colleagues from the newly-formed Senate minority,\u201d Gatchalian, the Committee\u2019s Vice-Chairman, said. (Photo: Senator Sherwin Gatchalian\/ Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian on Wednesday expressed confidence that the bill seeking free tuition fees in all state universities and colleges (SUCs) will be passed despite the recent Senate reorganization.<\/p>\n

The Senate Committee on Education, Arts, and Culture used to be chaired by Sen. Paolo Benigno Aquino IV before he was ousted and replaced by Sen. Francis Escudero.<\/p>\n

Aquino among other senators belonging to the Liberal Party \u2013Leila de Lima, Franklin Drilon, Risa Hontiveros and Francis Pangilinan \u2013also transferred from the majority bloc to the minority.<\/p>\n

He is also principal sponsor of Senate Bill No. 1304 or the \u201cFree Higher Education for All Act\u201d, which is currently being tackled in the plenary. Gatchalian is co-sponsor.<\/p>\n

“The Free Higher Education for All Act continues to enjoy widespread support among senators, including our colleagues from the newly-formed Senate minority,\u201d Gatchalian, the Committee\u2019s Vice-Chairman, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am optimistic that we will be able to put our political differences aside and continue to provide unified support for this important higher educational reform,” he added.<\/p>\n

Like Aquino, Gatchalian argued that the bill is not anti-poor as it would significantly improve the financial position of working-class households which struggle to cope with the high cost of tertiary education.<\/p>\n

Gatchalian said that by giving working-class households an opportunity to increase household savings, the policy would protect near-poor and low-income households from economic shocks.<\/p>\n

“By lessening the burden of educational costs on working-class households, we are giving them the chance to build a more prosperous future for themselves and their loved ones, Gatchalian said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is in line with the country’s long-term socioeconomic goal of building a strong middle-income society. Anyone who characterizes this advocacy as ‘anti-poor’ is obviously out-of-touch with the needs of the average Filipino,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian on Wednesday expressed confidence that the bill seeking free tuition fees in all state universities and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":91836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[604,16,95],"tags":[15958,14359,15959],"class_list":["post-91829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-education","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-free-tuition-fee","tag-senator-sherwin-gatchalian","tag-sucs","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}