Xavier’s losses nearing P100m

By NITZ ARANCON

Correspondent

XAVIER University has been gripped by a serious financial crisis resulting from a significant drop in the number of students. It’s losses have already reached P90 million.

The university’s president, Fr. Roberto Yap, revealed this yesterday even as he appealed to Xavier’s non-teaching workers to understand why the school would not be able to gift them with P5 thousand each in time for Christmas.

The organized employees started demonstrations  on Tuesday, and threatened to stage a labor strike in an effort to pressure the Jesuitun institution into giving them Christmas gratuity of P5 thousand each.

But Fr. Yap said Xavier could only afford to gift them with P1 thousand each because the university’s losses.

“Ang ako lang unta nga magtinabangay kita kay ni-a man ta karon sa financial crisis. Pero kon mobalik na sa normal ang atong net income, walay problema   ’nang cash gift, ato kanang ihatag,” he said.

Xavier has been generous to its workers during Yuletide for years. From 2006 to 2015, it gave each of them Christmas cash gifts ranging from P4 thousand to P10,800. Last year’s gratuity was the lowest so far at P4 thousand.

Yap blamed Xavier’s financial crisis to the drop in the number of enrollees, aggravated by the K to 12 program of the Department of Education (Deped).

“Wala na man tay enrollees sa first year college, wala poy sophomore tungod sa K to 12 program, so mi-reduce gayud ang atong number of enrollees,” he said.

For this year, Xavier’s students from elementary graders to college reached 13,729. In 2010, the enrollees numbered 16,313.

Yap showed the trend: in 2011, it dropped to 16,200; 16,084 in 2012; 15,708 in 2013; 14,897 in 2015;  14,729 in 2015.

He said the university has been seeing the drop, particularly in the nursing, engineering and agriculture courses even before the K to 12 program. But he said K to 12 aggravated the problem.

Despite the losses, Xavier did not resort to retrenchment and its operating expenses have not been gone down, he said.

Yap said he was saddened because the workers rejected the P1-thousand cash gift.

“Kining cash gift, dili man kini benefits, gasa man kini.  So kay gasa man, dili kita obliged mohatag  sa ilang gusto nga amount,” he said.

Yap said Xavier’s management cannot be forced to shell out P5 thousand each because it’s not in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

Unless settled, Yap said, Xavier may opt to file a petition for arbitration or a petition to the Labor Secretary to assume jurisdiction.