THOUSANDS of college scholars in Cebu City were reportedly left without financial support for an entire semester — and for many, the consequences were immediate and painful. Some borrowed money just to get by. Others skipped meals. A number came dangerously close to abandoning their studies altogether.
It was this reality that Councilor Pastor “Jun” Alcover Jr. brought to the floor of the Cebu City Council on March 23, 2026, in a privilege speech that laid bare what he described as a “serious lapse” in planning, budgeting, and coordination within the city government.
Complaints
The Cebu City College Scholarship Program (CCCSP) is designed to ease the financial burden on students from low-income families pursuing college education in private institutions. Under the program, scholars are entitled to P10,000 in tuition assistance and P1,000 for school supplies per semester — modest amounts, but ones that many students depend on not just for academic fees, but for transportation, meals, and other daily necessities.
For School Year 2025–2026, those funds never arrived on time. First semester allowances were not released, leaving scholars and their families to shoulder expenses the city had committed to cover.
Alcover said his office had been flooded with complaints from affected students and parents, and stressed that the problem was not isolated. It was widespread — cutting across multiple schools and thousands of households already struggling with rising costs and economic pressures.
How it happened
The CCCSP had acknowledged the problem even before Alcover took to the podium. In an official statement posted on its Facebook page on March 17, 2026 — nearly a week before the privilege speech — the program identified two compounding factors behind the delay.
The first was a budget problem: funds allocated for the scholarship program in 2025 were insufficient to cover the semester’s obligations. The second was an administrative one: billing documents from accredited partner schools, including the University of Cebu (UC) and the University of the Visayas (UV), were only finalized in early January 2026, well after the semester had already begun.
The CCCSP added that it has since been authorized to draw from the 2026 budget, and that processing of the overdue allowances is now underway. The office assured scholars that efforts to release the funds were ongoing.
Not good enough, says Alcover
That assurance, however, did not satisfy Alcover. While he acknowledged that corrective steps had been initiated, he argued that the resumption of processing did not excuse what had already occurred. The delay, he said, was not simply an administrative misstep — it was a symptom of deeper institutional failures: poor foresight, inadequate inter-agency coordination, and the absence of safeguards that should have caught the problem before it reached the scholars.
He pressed the council with a series of pointed questions. Why were sufficient funds not set aside in the 2025 budget? What caused partner schools to submit their billing documents so late? What mechanisms are now in place to prevent a recurrence? And perhaps most critically — how had scholarship funds from prior years been utilized, and were there warning signs that had gone unheeded?
“To fail to act on this matter is to fail not just as policymakers, but as stewards of the people’s trust,” he said.
Council’s response
Alcover’s speech drew a substantive response from his colleagues. Vice Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who was presiding over the session, sought to drill down on the root cause, asking whether budget constraints were the primary driver of the delay.
Councilor Dave Tumulak backed the call for an executive session, saying it was past time for the council to be fully briefed on the broader concerns raised by scholarship stakeholders, especially on budgetary matters. He pointed out that while funds for the program had already been included in the 2026 budget, the city was still in the first quarter of the year — underscoring the urgency of establishing clearer accounting and planning before the situation repeated itself.
Councilor Sisinio “Bebs” Andales added his voice to the call for transparency, urging that council members be given access to the exact budget figures so they could understand the full scope of the problem and act accordingly.
What’s next
Alcover has moved for an executive session bringing together the City Administrator’s Office, the CCCSP, the City Budget Office and partner schools — principally UC and UV — to identify corrective measures and craft policies that would prevent a similar failure from occurring again. The session has been scheduled for April 7, 2026.
For the thousands of scholars and families waiting on the sidelines, that meeting cannot come soon enough. What they are looking for is not just the release of what they are owed, but a credible commitment from the city that the systems meant to protect them have been examined, corrected, and strengthened — so that no student is ever again left to choose between their education and their next meal. / CAV