Board Member Christopher Baricuatro, chairman of the Cebu Provincial Board’s Committee on Higher and Technical Education, said a significant number of the 700 slots for the scholarship has yet to be filled up as students are having a hard time complying with the requirements for the program due to the quarantine restrictions in the past 5 months.
The 700 slots in the scholarship program will be divided equally to the seven districts of the province.
“We just advise the students to hurry in submitting their requirements because we will only count them in when all the documents are complete,” Baricuatro said in Cebuano.
Barcuatro added that the Capitol has foregone with the examination phase of the screening of applicants for the upcoming school year due to the pandemic.
The Provincial Board has allocated P15 million for the program for School Year 2020 to 2021 under the province’s 2020 budget.
READ: PB okays ordinance creating new scholarship, scraps Paglaum
CP-GIFTS effectively repeals all the other scholarship grants offered by the province including the Paglaum Scholarship which granted an education subsidy for children coming from underprivileged and vulnerable families in the province.
An applicant, who makes the cut, will have to maintain a weighted average equivalent to 85 percent every semester to keep the scholarship, a requirement that was not part of the previous scholarship programs.
While the new scholarship grant was supposedly exclusive for incoming college freshmen, Barricuatro said they would also accommodate scholars who were enlisted in the previous scholarship programs of the Capitol./dbs