Diaz, Ebdane team up for bigger scholarship program

IBA, Zambales: More students from poor families in Zambales are expected to benefit from the scholarship program of Rep. Antonio Diaz of the Zambales 2nd district, following his team-up with gubernatorial candidate Hermogenes Ebdane Jr.

Diaz, during the kickoff of the local election campaign recently, said that his scholarship program will receive more support from Ebdane, the former public works secretary, who hails from Candelaria town in this province.

“Jun and I have formed the ‘Scholarship Team’ so that we could provide more assistance to students from poor families in Zambales,” Diaz said. “If Jun becomes the next governor, you can be sure that we can send more children to school,” Diaz promised.

Fr. Teodoro Camat, who is in charge of Diaz’s scholarship program, said that beneficiaries of Diaz’s program now stand at nearly 30,000 students, although over the years, “there have been over a few hundred thousand grantees since the inception of the program in 1993.”

Camat explained that since that year, Diaz has concentrated his entire pork barrel fund for the education of the youth of Zambales.

In this, Diaz “is unique among all congressmen in the country because he devotes all of his pork barrel to his scholarship program, and not just a part of it,” Camat said.

Records from the congressman’s office showed that every Diaz scholar in a public school receives at least P1,000 each year for tuition fees, while his counterpart in a private school gets at least P4,000. Camat said that the funds given to students are then supplemented by bonuses and other forms of assistance given to the families of the scholars and to the students themselves.

However, it was said that Diaz’s allocation of about P70 million from the national government sometimes falls short, given the number of beneficiaries of the program.

On the average, Diaz’s office had to look for another P10 million each year to augment the pork barrel funds for the scholarship program.

This is where Ebdane could play a significant part, said Camat.

Camat said that Diaz is the author of the Government Assistance for Students and Teachers in Private Education (GASTPE) law. “This encourages the best students who are poor to continue their studies in private schools, whether in or out of the province,” Camat said.

The  GASTPE program and Diaz’s own scholarship project are implemented by the the Comission on Higher Education, and Diaz’s office “only performs a ministerial function,” Camat said.

The program official also admitted that the political capital from the scholarship program has ensured Diaz his re-election for several terms in the second district. “Since he ran as congressman in the early 1990s, no one has ever beaten him,” Camat recalled. “The only time he lost was when he ran for governor, after completing three terms as congressman.”

Camat added that the Diaz camp  remains confident even when the congressman is being challenged by Cheryl Deloso-Montalla, daughter of the incumbent governor.

“We are not worried,” Camat said, “Especially now that he has teamed up with Ebdane. They have a very strong alliance.”