PALO, Leyte — The Department of Science and Technology (DoST) regional office in Eastern Visayas is alarmed at the decreasing number of senior high school graduates from the region who pass the S&T Undergraduate Scholarship Program.

Newly installed DoST regional director John Glenn Ocaña said the number of passers in the scholarship program has been steadily decreasing especially in the last three years.

“We are now second from the lowest among regions in the number of passers. This is already alarming to us,” he said.

“We still have the same schools offering the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics strand and the number of enrollees are about the same. But our number of passers has been going down,” Ocaña said.

The DoST’s S&T Undergraduate Scholarship Program is a highly competitive paper and pen examination conducted annually. The examination is open to high school graduates who belong to the top 5 percent of their graduating class.