FORMER Senator and Alyansa senatorial bet Panfilo Lacson plans to revisit the Free Tertiary Education Act to streamline its procedures, after receiving information that applicants are having difficulty meeting the requirements for it.

Lacson, whose scrutiny of the national budget triggered the initial funding for the law, said the procedures may need to be simplified so that poor but deserving students will not be denied an opportunity for free education.

“We will revisit the Free Tertiary Education Act and streamline it if needed. If the information is true that many requirements are imposed on applicants, it indicates the program does not want beneficiaries. The requirements may need to be simplified,” he said.

“The law decrees that it be simple. Could it be that the implementing rules are complicated? We must revisit it and if needed, make the needed amendments. So we will visit the Free Tertiary Education Act,” he added.

But Lacson also stressed that the exams to qualify for free tertiary education must be competitive, lest it become prone to abuse.

He said that if the exams are not competitive, anyone with connections to some politicians can be made beneficiaries of the free tertiary education law – without being motivated to study well.

“If they become beneficiaries through that route, they are likely to keep failing because they are not motivated to study well,” he said.

In 2016, Lacson set in motion the funding for the Free Tertiary Education Act, which was still about to become a law at the time, when he uncovered an P8.3-billion appropriation involving the Department of Public Works and Highways’ budget for 2017.

Despite lobbying from the congressmen concerned, he introduced an amendment to remove it from the budget.

His fellow senators eventually agreed to put the amount in what would become the Free Tertiary Education Act of 2017.