Council seeks to hasten release of scholarship funds

THE City Council wants to streamline the processing of payment for its scholarship program.
In an executive session last Friday, Councilor Lea Japson raised the concern over the delayed payment of allowances to the scholars and the tuition to their respective schools.
As a remedy to the problem, Councilor Nestor Archival suggested the need to create a computerized database of the city’s scholarship system which has 16,000 beneficiaries this school year.
Called to the executive session to explain the delays in the payment of allowances to scholars and their school tuition, city accountant Mark Solomon said that they manually process billings from schools and collection from students.
It takes three to four months from the billing to the actual payment, he said.
Japson said this is not good for students as they need the timely release of their allowances.
Schools enlisted in the scholarship program admit that they are used to the delayed payment.
Councilor Sisinio Andales had called the attention of the City Council on the delayed release of payments for the scholarship program in the Feb. 4 regular session. Last Friday’s executive session looked into the issue.
Councilor Archival who presided over the executive session, said the City Council should implement a resolution for the scholarship committee to establish a computer-based data bank.
“The moment we computerize and have data banks, I think the processing will be compressed to three months,” Archival said./Correspondent Nestle Semilla