CCT for disaster infrastructure

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

8/13/2012

What the country could build now is a floating grandstand. Then it will be very convenient for BS Aquino III, the other politicians, the DSWD and DILG secretary, the disaster officials, do-goody media networks, ad nausea to perform their center-staging for the national audience. This should be very welcome next year as it is election campaign year. There must be a special rotating stage for BS Aquino and his Cabinet to announce new flood control projects, such as the headline today trumpeting a P352-billion 20-year flood control project. That announcement is clearly intended to cover BS Aquino III's criminally insane move to cancel crucial flood control project such as the Laguna Lake dredging that could have started two years ago and may have mitigated the floods this year. He could also have taken the initiative in reviving the Parañaque floodway project on the plans decades ago but no, he just blabbered on about "tuwid na daan."

To start spending on flood control projects now is just catch up, which speaks of the absolute lack of strategic sense of BS Aquino III and his entire team when they sat down to govern the country two years ago. Without such strategic vision how come they now have this sudden visionary project that will span 20 years or so envisioning such a grand and majestic flood control project costing such as impressive amount. The P352-billion project cost is just a headline and easy announce but what are the details? I can't imagine the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) suddenly conceptualizing and drawing up such a comprehensive plan that would take over 20 years to accomplish — drawn up in the span of a week at the height of the current flood crisis! It is more likely that this headline was frantically designed by Malacañang to parry the growing backlash to its dereliction the past two years of its duty to prepare the nation for these floods. From this perspective, even the aborted chopper flight of BSA III seems like a gimmick.

If the Noynoying administration had more imagination and initiative it could have done a few things early on, like combining its infamously notorious unproductive doleout conditional cash transfer (CCT) program with a work agenda related to flood control project all over the country. A flood control directed work-for-cash program engaged in cleaning up waterways, sewing water floatation jacket stuffed with trashed styrofoam packaging, cleaning sewerage systems, helping dredge canals and clearing Laguna de Bay of water lilies and silt, elevating the levees alongside Marikina, Pasig and other rivers. The CCT beneficiaries could also be engaged in building rafts for flood emergencies by assembling empty oil drums into small floating platforms for flood prone barangays where they reside. The projects could include making tools and equipment from simple auto-jack powered lifting devices, fashioning emergency stretchers, makeshift tents for earthquake crises.

We could think of many more productive projects where the CCT could be used, such as cottage industries making fiberglass safety helmets that can be distributed to schools and public offices for earthquake emergencies. I will bet that the readers of this column can come up with labor intensive projects that can channel the CCT into productive enterprises that can also help provide the basic supplies and equipment for disaster preparedness. Right there in the CCT budget is P35 billion that could already jump start for all types of disaster preparedness. When we give it some thought we see that so much can be done with the budgets already allocated today. In fact, it would be productive and fun to invite readers to send in their ideas on how else the P35-billion CCT can be used productively to provide cash for work that will help in disaster mitigation, flood control and other public effort. We don't need rocket scientists in the Cabinet or the DPWH, just sincere and creative men and women.

A few more ideas: Since the CCT is supposed to be directed toward the welfare of the poor, the urban homeless squatting in the flood stricken areas we see today can be prioritized. They can be assisted with self-help projects to raise their homes on stilts, and we would have new Badjao type homes on stilts that could help resident weather the weeklong floods, and provide a new tourist spot for people to marvel at. If we use the CCT budget every year toward constructing components of those plans of the DPWH engineers for solving the perennial and aggravating flood perils we'd have that P350 billion spent and invested in flood and other disaster mitigation project within 10 years. We don't need to wait until 2035 as the DPWH announced to complete the programs. In only 10 years it would all be done, without allocating additional budgets and employing hundreds of thousands gainfully and taking home enough pay to enroll their children in school and provide sufficient nutrition for the family.

With P35-billion CCT dedicated to creating jobs in flood and disaster preparedness, or other concrete and productive projects all over the country, the environmental and safety awareness level of our people will rise — this pedagogical impact would be incalculable. No doubt, with that kind of budget and the fulfillment generated by the productive income the working poor would certainly gladly donate more floating grandstand every year for the eager do-gooders in society.

(TNT with HTL, Saturdays 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. and Sundays, on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, this week: "Mines: Theirs or Ours?"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

August scourge: Floods and...

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

8/10/2012

The rains, floods and landslides have been the scourge of our lives for two weeks now, but the sun will shine again even after the low pressure areas and Typhoon "Saola" shall have passed as did "Ondoy" and "Sendong" in years past. The damage estimates will be in the hundreds of millions or a few billions of pesos; and the nation's life will move on.

But there is a scourge that has stayed with us for over 10 years now like a permanent devastating storm staying steady upon this land. Wreaking havoc year in and year out, the pestilence of oppressively exorbitant power costs that continue to rise unabated, despite all the reasons for these to naturally come down, has inflicted hundreds of billions of economic losses each year.

The rains and flooding of our country's hydroelectric dams should have naturally lowered power rates as nature's way of compensating for the damage of the floods — but no, in this August rainy season, our power rates will still go up!

A headline just three days ago ("Meralco rates to rise in August") carried dominant power firm Manila Electric Co. (Meralco)'s announcement that "the increase in the generation charge this month was the result of the eight-day shutdown of the Malampaya gas pipeline, which affected one-third of the total power supply in Luzon in July." But what's the real score?

Currently minority stockholders of Meralco, the Lopezes locked in Meralco's power supply to power plants they own even after selling the company's lion's share to the other oligarchs, to ensure that they would continue to enjoy the fruits of the sweetheart deal they dealt for themselves.

Meralco admitted that "it sourced 45.6 percent of its requirements from three independent power producers (IPPs) — the Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo gas plants (both Lopez-owned) and the Quezon Power Philippines Ltd. — which increased their rates by a combined 48 centavos per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to P5.58 per kWh," which was why "without the gas from the Malampaya… the Lopez Group's First Gas resorted to the use of more expensive liquid condensate fuel to ensure a continued generation supply to Meralco."

Now why wasn't Meralco made to shift primarily to cheap hydroelectric power? The first typhoons this year entered the Philippines in June and the dams were already filled.

In that same report, Meralco admitted that state-owned National Power Corp. (Napocor), from which it gets 41.7 percent of its supply, had reduced its power sold to Meralco by P0.66 per kWh; and yet the private power company said it "failed to offset the increases in the Wesm (Wholesale Electricity Spot Market) and IPP charges." Now how on earth would a reduction of P0.66 per kWh fail to offset the P0.48 per kWh increase by the Lopez gas-powered IPPs? Here's why: Meralco said it sourced 12.6 percent of its supply from Wesm at a cost of P14.70 per kWh. Isn't the Wesm supposed to help promote competitiveness and lower prices? Instead, it always contributes to increasing the prices because its "market operations" ensure the IPPs' windfall.

A Wesm Web site explains, "The Wesm is designed to encourage competition in generation while at the same time providing incentives for the effective operation and development of the transmission networks, coupled with locational price signals to encourage the economically correct geographic placement of any future planned generation," obviously using language designed for arbitrary interpretations and selective allocation. Thus, in the past years Wesm prices have gone up to P60 per kWh as it did sometime in 2008 or 2009 when government attempted (through the spot market) to recover its losses from Gloria Arroyo's favors to the power oligarchs. Since the Wesm share in the total price would only be around 10 percent, it will simply go unnoticed if media do not report on it. But as the public has now wised up, people like us now monitor it. However, for the most part, there are a number of media outlets that the oligarchs still completely control to hoodwink the innocents.

Like other social networks, one news Web site raps for the power oligarchs. Our student volunteer, Richard, sent us two disinformation pieces on the power issue from Rappler. The first was a few weeks ago when it featured a very expensive animation on the high power rates, which blamed everything on Napocor, while totally omitting any mention of Meralco; the power oligarchs' corruption of Congress to pass the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira); the illegal change from the 12-percent Return-on-Rate Base to the 17-percent Performance Based Regulation formula of computing power rates; the 500 percent to 900 percent overprice in the assets of Meralco; the manipulations in the Wesm; or the overpricing of Malampaya gas for power, ad nausea. The second is an interview with Energy Secretary Rene Almendras, painting him as a "straight shooter" who is into "depoliticizing energy" while staying completely silent on the nationwide protests against his subservience to the power oligarchs or of Mindanao's total rejection of his actuations in the region's 1st quarter 2012 power crisis.
Energy Chief Rene Almendras was supposed to have been replaced by Aug. 1, but he seems to be staying longer while undergoing an image remake. Why? Our Energy Department insiders say Almendras and Cailao still have to sell off (or privatize) the Philippine National Oil Co.-Exploration Corp. (PNOC-EC) and Malampaya's remaining 14-year contract to Shell-Texaco; likewise the privatization of four power barges; as well as the Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric complex in Mindanao (deemed imperative by Osmeña and company)

Malacañang seems powerless against these masters of Almendras. They must be more powerful than the rains or typhoons that have passed.

(Watch Talk News TV with HTL, Saturdays, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m. and Sundays, on GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, this week on "Power Consumer Struggle Updates" with Jojo Borja, Butch Junia and lawyer Luke Espiritu; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

Arthur vs St. Heidi

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

8/6/2012

I wrote column entitled "A Trojan Horse" in the Feb. 7, 2011 the Tribune describing what I saw as the insertion of a virus in the Commission on Audit (CoA) intended for political demolition jobs, done by the lobbyists of the Yellow cabal.

When CoA Commissioner Heid Mendoza testified before the Senate impeachment court that Chief Justice Renato Corona had $28 million in his FCDU (foreign currency deposit) account by totaling transactions of several years as if it were one sum, every Filipino should have realized that they were looking at that virus of an accountant and auditor that the "civil society" or the Yellows canonized. It had to take Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales to restore some credibility to the government's "hidden" dollar account of Corona in admitting that the total deposit was only $2 million is the whopper of an arithmetic of Heidi Mendoza is discounted.

If the whopper of a story of Heidi Mendoza at the Senate impeachment hearings is not enough to convince some Saint Heidi Mendoza worshippers (as there are still a few I encounter who wonder why anyone should doubt her sainthood as the Ateneo School of Government, the Inquirer and the Philippine Star, and ABS-CBN had already anointed her) then they should get to know Arthur Benasa, a 40-year veteran of CoA and retired the past 10 years from the institution he had devoted a lifetime serving.

Mr. Benasa, an impecunious 71 year old, had gotten in touch with me through Linggoy Alcuaz whom he sought out in mid-2011 in a media Kapihan to present his case against the sainthood of Heidi Mendoza. I noted Mr. Benasa's arguments at that time but never had an opportunity to take up his cause after I had written my piece on the matter and moved on to the many other issues that confront the public constantly.

With the recent controversy over the revival of certain settled issues affecting the City of Makati by none other that Saint Heidi Mendoza, I was reminded of Mr. Benasa's criticisms of Saint Heidi Mendoza. It was fortunate I had his cell phone number still and called to invite him to discuss his issues on our Global News Network (GNN) cable TV program. Before finally agreeing to join my show Benasa called to clarify a few things: first, what is my take on the Reproductive Health (RH) bill. This was, of course, not relevant but given the venerable status of the man I believed I understood. I said that I'm against the RH bill for reasons not similar to the Catholic Church's arguments, Benasa felt at ease as he wanted assurance that we are like minded, as he is firmly against the RH bill. Then he explained the next condition for joining the show, "no politics" as he didn't want to "dilute his pure intentions." I assured him that we were likely like-minded in pursuing truth about the real Heidi Mendoza.

I jokingly added that maybe we are alike in that we both have little money, and he laughed and felt comfortable enough to admit that he needed taxi fare to be sure to make it to the station on time. I figured the distance from Sucat to Makati and back would require about P500 and sent this to his bank account. He arrived that afternoon at the studio ahead of me, with a folder of documents he was all prepared to discuss in detail. On the show the first thing I asked was why he was so incensed with Heidi Mendoza as to go to all this trouble crusading in media for and meeting journalists like me to tell his story. He explained that when he heard Heidi Mendoza lie and malign the CoA as an institution and literally everyone with it as corrupt, and the consequence of that slander which he heard and read from the news that the public had taken to stoning CoA shuttle buses: That was the tipping point.

Mr. Benasa declared outright that Heidi Mendoza lied through her teeth in her testimonies to the Senate in the Gen. Garcia plea bargain hearings when she claimed under oath: 1) she headed a special six-member team the CoA to investigate Garcia's transactions; she was only a member of the team and never a team leader (though she tried to arrogate this unto her self); 2) that she submitted an official audit report; as a mere member she could not singularly submit a report; 3) she said the chairman, commissioners and directors did not support her when she was provided a vehicle, office and more than P200,000 as a member of the team to conduct the audit (which she refused to be audited on claiming it was confidential), and Benasa claims he had evidence to show this money was also spent in bars; and due to all these she inflicted to much damage on the CoA as an institution and the countless personalities quietly serving to the best of their capabilities.

In the latter part of the interview Benasa added another important item, the claim of Heidi Mendoza that $5,000 of a UN fund to the PNP was missing, and the UN headquarters had to call Manila to belie that claim and state that there was not such missing fund. Benasa ended with an ominous caution to the government on Heidi Mendoza saying, "You know the illusion of grandeur of this may not be controlled… and illusion is always without limit."

(TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., and Sun 8am on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8: this week ""True up or throw up" power rates; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)