Sunday, August 31, 2008 Congressman asks village chiefs to help implement scholarships
REP. Raul del Mar reminded Cebu City north district barangay captains to submit to his office the names of two high school students for his scholarship program.
The students should be enrolled in a private school and each will receive a refund of P5,000 a year, he said.
“Kinahanglan nako ang ngalan sa inyong scholars, duha ka book kada barangay. The scholarship will be a refund for private school students who are in need. So let’s focus on the most needy,” he said.
Del Mar, along with Mayor Tomas Osmeña, was the guest of the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) third general assembly last Monday at the ABC office in the South Road Properties (SRP).
Del Mar said his program already has the concurrence of the Department of Education, only that barangay captains have not been cooperating.
He announced the scholarship program to barangay captains in December last year yet, saying P3 million was already being processed at that time for the project.
He said he had asked the captains to provide one name, while the Sangguniang Kabataan chairperson would provide another. “Wala man ka-pass (No one passed any names),” he told the barangay captains last Monday.
One barangay captain, though, told Sun.Star Cebu that what del Mar asked was difficult because they could hardly find a private school student from their place, which is a mountain barangay.
“Nearly all the children in our barangay attend the public high school, because the private schools are too expensive and they would have to spend extra on fares,” he said, but asked not to be named.
The scholarship program stipulates that a qualified scholar should have graduated from a public elementary school but is now enrolled in a private school.
Del Mar made it that way because public high school is supposedly for free, at least in terms of tuition.
He told the barangay captains to hurry up and if they could not personally identify whom they should nominate, they could at least have the barangay council identify the scholars from their barangays. (RHM)
