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From the Tribune Editorial:
Something is definitely wrong somewhere in Gloria's world.
In her State of the Nation Address (Sona), she stressed several times over, that she has the funds for the future massive infrastructure projects she laid out; funds for the war against terror; the war against corruption, and the war against the insurgents, among many other funds she claims to have.
Yet in the case of the overseas workers' funds, where her government should have, at the very least, some P8 billion that should be flowing, given the war conditions in Lebanon, where some 34,000 Filipino workers are stationed, all Gloria has eked out for evacuation purposes is P150 million.
And Gloria's people are stingy with that miniscule amount even at this time of evacuation.
Philippine Ambassador to Lebanon Al Bichara has been complaining publicly that the embassy's funds are running out. He has asked for at least $1 million to keep things going.
For airing this complaint, Bichara has been berated heavily by Malacañang and the Department of Foreign Affairs with even a DFA undersecretary saying that if Bichara were a soldier during a time of war, he would shoot him dead. That's the diplomacy they teach this undersecretary?
There was too that remark from the undersecretary that all Bichara spends on is food and bus transport from Lebanon to Damascus. Just how much does this undersecretary think feeding sardine-packed OFWs in that church costs, given the many days they have been staying there?
Rafael Seguis, a DFA official, was sent to Lebanon to check on the claim of Bichara, and said the ambassador had less than $100,000 total. So what's that amount when one is dealing with the problem of some 34,000 Filipinos? But why are they so measly with the funds, since the OWWA funds, precisely meant for such contingencies, amount to some P8 billion minimum?
They all denied that there is a lack of funds, yet it was clear, from the flight arrivals of Filipino workers from the war-torn country, that there are less and less workers being brought home by the Philippine government, with the latest batch numbering some 50 workers and in a commercial flight, which means that chartered flights have been dumped by the Arroyo government as a means to get more Pinoy workers home and fast.
Even more ridiculous was the claim of Budget Secretary Andaya that he wouldn't release any money to Bichara unless and until the ambassador liquidates that which he has been given. With the red tape in Gloria's government and considering that the times are extraordinary in Lebanon and the Filipino situation, the Budget secretary wants to wait for a liquidation report? Has Gloria even liquidated the cash advances her office got for her many jaunts abroad? Past Commission on Audit reports showed a huge amount that has been left unliquidated for these trips.
Chances are, those billions in OWWA funds no longer exist, with the funds diverted elsewhere — again.
It will be recalled that in 2004, during election campaign time, OWWA funds diverted and used for those PhilHealth cards were questioned by a group of migrant workers. There was enough evidence of the diversion and obviously used for Gloria's presidential election campaign.
Still, some of these funds must have had a replenishment if they had not been diverted again. And it certainly looks like the funds aren't there, since Malacañang has been quite stingy with the money that should be poured in for the contract workers stranded in Lebanon. But why isn't this being done? Aren't these workers considered by this government as the modern economic heroes, since they have been helping greatly in propping the economy through their billions in remittances?
So where's all the OWWA money, Arroyo admin?
UPDATE: Ambassador to Lebanon Bichara apologizes:
AMBASSADOR to Lebanon Al Francis Bichara has apologized to Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo for telling media that the embassy in Beirut no longer has funds to pay for the expenses of overseas Filipinos wanting to be repatriated to Manila.
Bichara, in a letter to Romulo dated July 26, apologized for the "inconvenience or embarrassment" generated by comments he made during a TV interview.
He said he was made to believe by his staff that the initial funds of $50,000 for Oplan Sagip OFWs in Lebanon have been used up and the embassy is helpless until the amount is replenished.
"I was just trying to be candid and did not mean that the Philippine government had no money for the evacuation. Moreover, my staff also made me believe that the Embassy’s working funds could not be utilized for other purposes such as evacuation," he said.
is it possible that he and his staff got it all wrong about the funds? or is this another "apology" in the same mold as the one former Educations secretary Fe Hidalgo made after initially telling the truth re the lack of classrooms?
UPDATE: Senator Arroyo said there's no OWWA funds in lebanon, gives lie to gov't claims
SEN. Joker Arroyo yesterday said no funds reached the Philippine embassy in Lebanon despite statements from government officials.
He said the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration released a token $20,000 to its own OWWA office in Lebanon but not directly to the Philippine embassy, which is the lead agency in the evacuation efforts.
Arroyo, chairman of the Senate blue ribbon committee, said he talked with Al Francis Bichara, ambassador to Lebanon, twice over the weekend and he was told that no OWWA funds have been released to the embassy. Arroyo and Bichara are both from the Bicol region.
Bichara last week got flak for saying lack of funds are hampering operations for the OFWs. The statement caught the ire of officials of OWWA and even the Department of Foreign Affairs who were involved in the evacuation efforts.
Bichara, in a letter dated July 26, apologized to Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, saying he was made to believe by his staff that the initial funds of $50,000 for Oplan Sagip OFWs in Lebanon had been used up and the embassy in Lebanon could no longer make disbursements until the amount is replenished.
But Arroyo said he has in his possession documents that would show that the Philippine embassy in Lebanon has not received a single centavo from OWWA as of July 27.
OWWA has a P7.5 billion fund coming from fees charged OFWs.
Arroyo said Bichara’s office is spending its own budget to process the evacuation papers and provide care to the distressed OFWs caught in the conflict in Lebanon.
From Lito banayo:
The continuing conflict in Lebanon spawned by the Israelis and the Hezbollah once again brings the nation focused on the sad plight of the so-called "bagong bayani" who are in reality modern-day slaves.
Watching on television how our refugees are cramped in a church with hardly any space to stretch tired and tensed limbs, sleeping on concrete floors and parking spaces even, while waiting for few and far between buses to bring them to Syria and thence to flight back home is enough to spoil your dinner. Your heart cries out to them as they relate tales of horror and woe – of being locked up in their employers’ apartments in shell-shocked Beirut, or being refused payment of slave wages and thus come home empty-handed, escaping from war and into a bleak and blank future.
And then you hear functionaries of Doña Gloria rant against each other because people blame them, and rightly so, for the inadequacy of their response to a disaster in the making in war-torn Lebanon. Thus far, it seems that only God and Fr. Agustin Advincula, bless him, are on the side of the overseas workers trapped in a nightmare their own government seems unable to mitigate with dispatch. Only God knows what would happen if, God forbid, Fr. Advincula’s Shrine of the Miraculous Medal should get hit by a stray missile, or a bus carrying our refugees is blasted by a bomb sent to whom it may concern.. And you get enraged, not because you expect this government to be efficient at anything, but because these modern-day slaves actually paid in advance, insurance money out of their future blood, sweat and tears, to precisely finance their prompt and proper repatriation in case the unexpected happen.
Each and every overseas contract worker pays the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration the equivalent of 25 US dollars each time they leave the country for work abroad. The OWWA was established to provide for their welfare. Welfare, in case OWWA or Doña Gloria, her Conejos and her absent Bert Romulo do not quite understand its meaning, includes taking care of their safety and security in the event anything untoward happens to them while they are out of the country. In fact every citizen of the Republic should be the responsibility of their country. That is why we have embassies and consulates paid out of taxpayer money. Their duty is to care for every Filipino within their areas of jurisdiction, and not just minister to the whims and caprices of visiting firemen such as members of Congress or the Cabinet when these denizens loiter around the world.
In the case of the overseas workers, precisely because they have had governments that prioritize corruption over the common weal, they have had to fork over 25 dollars or 1,300 pesos each, to this creature of law called OWWA. This creature has collected tens of billions of pesos over the years. Its current administrator tells us that this OWWA fund stood at P8.1 billion as of December 2004. That, despite the half a billion that Doña Gloria caused to be transferred, for what legal or moral justification you still have to search and wonder about, to the Philhealth of Paquing Duque who reminded Malacañang in an urgent memorandum prior to the 2004 elections, that he precisely needed the monetary infusion as elections were fast approaching. Nothing has happened about that anomaly, except–one, the OWWA fund was depleted accordingly; two, Congress investigated and then whimpered; and three, Paquing Duque was rewarded with the health portfolio right after the Doña’s "victory". Duque, while not a member of The Gentleman’s League at Discovery Suites and elsewhere, is clearly a certified and certifiable member of the Doña’s Legion, along with his kabaleyan, Lambino and Esperon, Bengzon and Querol.
These terror-struck "bayani" who work as domestics for the Lebanese get 150 dollars per month, lower than the peso equivalent of the current minimum wage, except that they know they can get neither minimum wages nor jobs in the home country. And so they leave kith and kin, after pawning meager possessions, just to afford these immediate and extended families survival in the benighted country.
Now we see the spectacle of our ambassador and the undersecretaries of Bert Romulo raging their own war over money. Money that the "bagong alipin" paid for in advance. While the alipin stew in 40-degree heat inside a church fully converted into a sanctuary, and bake in the parking lot beside it, hospitality given free by kindly servants of God.
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MORE ON Arroyo's SONA from the Tribune:
The dream targets of Gloria, or the 20 or so infrastructure projects she boasted to be up by the time she steps down in 2010, are unraveling to be just that — dreams that apparently would be hard to realize given the state of finances under her term and given the normal time to put up these projects, assuming the funds are really there.
The targets are as unattainable as the pledge to balance the budget in 2008.
The State of the Nation Address (Sona) claimed this grandiose infrastructure projects are estimated to cost not less than P250 billion — unrealistic in itself, as figures — which, in three years means that Gloria would need to raise at least P80 billion in additional funds, including those from private infusions supposedly through the build-operate-transfer scheme, starting this year.
The three-year pump priming drive would thus be starting on the wrong foot this year, with the Arroyo administration living on a borrowed budget from last year.
While she asks for another P40 billion in the form of a supplemental budget, even this cannot be supplied by Congress constitutionally, since the 2006 budget bill has not been enacted into law. As the constitutionalists point out, since this is not law, this cannot be supplemented. But trust Congress to violate the Constitution and get away with it.
But considering that about P200 billion would have to be raised by the government for the Gloria vision, the rest from supposed private participation, something from P60 billion to P70 billion will have to be allocated from the budget in the final years of Gloria.
Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. claims that P10 billion would be alloted from the budget initially for the Gloria infrastructure binge. Pray tell where this would come from?
Read the whole thing.
More from Randy David on Arroyo's SONA.
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