Kids of displaced OFWs to get P30K education subsidy

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PRESIDENT Duterte on Monday night said a one-time P30,000 educational subsidy will be given to dependents of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who were affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic .

Duerte, in his weekly public address, said the grant is part of the P1 billion educational subsidy that will benefit some 33,000 college level students who are enrolled or will enroll in state universities and colleges (SUCs) and belongs to qualified OFW families.

He said the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), together with the United Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) and Department of Labor and Employment, will implementing the educational subsidy program.

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Prior to the subsidy program, the President had called on schools to allow students to pay their tuition fees via installment and directed the Land Bank of the Philippines to provide student loans over concerns that some students may not be able to enroll or pay their tuition because their parents lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones reported to Duterte that only 43 percent of student enrollees last year are returning to the private schools this year. She said many of the students in private schools are kids of OFWs who had been displaced or repatriated to the country due to the COVID-19.

She said enrollment in public school is now 97 percent of last year’s number of enrollees. A total of 23.9 million students are enrolled in public and private schools for the 2020-2021 schoolyear.

Briones also reported that part of the school curriculum is the promotion of psychosocial and mental health, which she said is timely amid the anxiety and fear of some people about the disease and the loss of jobs, among others.
She said DepEd has monitored one case of COVID-related suicide involving a student.

The President said the government is providing accommodations to medical frontliners who have been evicted or forced out from their rented homes or apartments due to their exposure to COVID-19 patients.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the ban on the deployment of Filipino health workers abroad remains, for now.

Roque said there is no discussion as of now about lifting the ban, which aims to protect the frontliners who would be risking their lives and health by working in countries with higher cases of COVID-19 than the Philippines.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Tokyo is urging OFWs in Japan to consider becoming overseas Filipino entrepreneurs (OFEs) or having small scale businesses during the COVID crisis.

“We are learning new skills, retooling, and upscaling our dear kababayans,” Labor Attaché to Tokyo Marie Rose Escalada.

“We can overcome this pandemic and build as one nation with a Filipino spirit of Bayanihan,” she added.

POLO-Tokyo Welfare Officer Amy Crisostomo said they are offering to train OFWs on food specialty, real estate, and online learning, businesses that she said are “bestsellers” amid the global health crisis.

The online training will be conducted via Zoom and is also simultaneously livestreamed at POLO-OWWA Tokyo Official Facebook page. There are an estimated 300,000 OFWs in Japan. — With Gerard Naval

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