Every year, the city government is setting aside P1 million for its scholarship program but in our two terms as city councilor, we met the "city scholars" not twice, but only once when we already chaired the committee on education in our second term.

A year ago, we amended the city scholarship program because we find it rather queer and full of lapses.

For instance, the screening of the applicants for the scholarship program before was not academic-based, meaning, poverty is more emphasized than the academic performance through the grades of the applicants.

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Another lapse is that when an applicant is admitted to the scholarship program after a "screening" by the scholarship committee, nothing is heard of the scholar until graduation.

At first, we enjoyed signing the certificate of scholarship together with the city mayor and the city division superintendent. But later on, we realized that we have not even seen the faces of these scholars.

They process their papers and vouchers either through their parents and relatives but we bet our last centavo that there were several city scholars who did not even have the opportunity of seeing what the city hall looked like.

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So we amended the city scholarship program last year dividing the city scholars into four categories: academic, athletic, ambassadors of goodwill and the chairmen of the Sangguniang Kabataan in the city's 15 barangays.

The academic scholars were given P10,000.00 per semester by city government while the athletic scholars were paid for their tuition fees. The ambassadors of goodwill like the winners of the search for Miss Tagbilaran were given limited scholarship of one or two semesters only.

The SK chairmen are given full scholarship for any course they enroll in city's schools.

Most SK chairmen, we learned, took up nursing and the city scholarship fund is almost depleted.

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Now comes Mayor Dan Neri Lim's pronouncements to give priority to the graduates of the Cogon Night High School, a pet project of ABC Pres. Betty Torralba, in the city's scholarship program if they pass the scholarship examination administered by the Central Visayas State College of Agricultures, Forestry and Technology (CVSCAFT).

The city mayor also requested the city sanggunian to reduce the scholarship of the SK chairmen to only P10,000 per semester.

This will be the meat of the proposed ordinance we are sponsoring regular the regular session of the 9th Sangguniang Panlungsod today. The proposed measure is authored by Vice-Mayor Nuevas T. Montes.

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