600 workers to suffer for bosses’ misdeeds

On June 30 more than 600 lowly workers of Quedancor will be laid off — victims of the government agency’s financial mismanagement. Reason for the retrenchment: “huge operational losses.” Supposedly Quedancor has run out of funds to sustain one-third of its work force. The employees naturally are asking why they’ll be the ones punished for their superiors’ misdeeds. They’re wondering too what ever happened to Malacañang’s promise of no government layoffs during the global financial crisis.

 For two years Quedancor union leaders have been begging Congress and Malacañang to infuse fresh capital. This, so the agency can go on guaranteeing loans given by banks to farmers, fishermen, and micro-entrepreneurs. The Arroyo admin is reluctant, however. Quedancor was exposed to have wasted at least P2 billion in ghost dispersal of piglets to farmers during the 2004 presidential campaign. It came along with the P728-million fertilizer scam, and both involved then-agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Jocjoc” Bolante. For the admin to plunk new money into an agency it had milked dry would re-spotlight how Gloria Arroyo’s 2004 presidential run benefited from the fund misuses. Easier to sacrifice 600 little Injuns than the President’s image. Bolante, it will be recalled from two Senate inquiries, was a close associate of First Gentleman Mike Arroyo.

Quedancor’s woes began two months before the May 2004 elections, when it borrowed P5 billion from Equitable-PCIBank and Land Bank. From a subsequent audit of the deal, it appeared that the agency needed only a fifth of the amount to expand its guaranteeing of agricultural loans. The board, headed by then-agriculture secretary Luisito Lorenzo, had in fact initially approved in Jan. 2004 a borrowing of only P1 billion. Something funny happened on the way to the loan counter. Quedancor president Nelson Buenaflor presented a too rosy business plan to borrow up to P10 billion, which the board blindly accepted. VPs Niels Patrick Riconalla and Leticia Santos helped Buenaflor get the board assent for what auditors later called “very unrealistic financial-operational projections.”

It turned out from subsequent investigation that the three execs had long been negotiating for P5 billion in credit from Equitable-PCI and Land Bank. They did this through a private consulting firm, which upon the release of the P5 billion received a staggering P100-million fee from Land Bank. Bolante at the time sat in the government bank’s board, and was making fake deliveries of fertilizers to Lakas-Kampi congressmen and governors.

 By 2007 Quedancor was beginning to collapse under the weight of its debts. Its 30-year history of spurring rural growth by securing P47 billion in farm loans was going down the drain. Last year, upon Bolante’s extradition from the US, the Senate conducted full-blown investigations of the financial scam. Only then did the story of plunder begin to unravel.

The Senate has since recommended the indictment of Bolante and cohorts, but the justice department and Ombudsman have yet to act. Faster than the two prosecutorial offices, though, is the layoff of 600 Quedancor employees due to fund depletion. And nobody cares. What’s 600 more added to the millions rendered jobless by the global recession?

* * *

The hoodlums used to strike at the intersection of Quirino and Osmeña Avenues, near their slum, in Manila. While the traffic light is red, they’d break a lone motorist’s side mirror or radio antenna. When the irate car owner alights to confront them, they maul him and steal his belongings: wallet, wristwatch, cell phone, jewelry, laptop, everything portable of value. They then run into the alleys where cops are afraid to give chase.

Encouraged by feeble police response, new gangs sprouted near the corner of Araneta and Aurora Avenues in Quezon City, and EDSA in Pasay and Mandaluyong cities. Same modus operandi: when traffic stops, they strike. Still, no protection for citizens who pay police salaries.

Now still another robbery-extortion band has found a good spot: the Airport Road just outside NAIA Terminal-1 in Pasay. They harass drivers of vans and cars exiting the terminal gates, banging windows, doors and roofs, until given cash.

I bet you, if a besieged motorist happens to fight back and shoot an attacker, the cops would be quick to book him. But the rackets will go on, maybe because the cops think everybody has the right to extort like them.–Jarius Bondoc, Philippine Star

* * *

E-mail: jariusbondoc@workmail.com