Lack of experts slowing down gov’t projects

“Technical deficit.” That was the term Budget Sec. Florencio Abad used Wednesday to explain the government’s slowness to implement infrastructure works. By that, he meant lack of experts — engineers and technologists — to evaluate and oversee projects that are new to the government.

As example, Abad said that planning a railway project would need at least three kinds of engineers: for rails, for systems, and for signals. That’s just for starters. Running such transport mode also would require electrical, electronics, mechanical, civil, structural, and industrial engineers, and info-technologists.

And where are such experts? The answer has been known for decades: if they’re not in domestic private companies, then they’re in foreign lands that are developing much faster. They’re not in the government service, which pays a pittance for their specializations. (Even the weather bureau chief was pirated to the Middle East with a pay ten times more than in the homeland.)

Since Abad was speaking before the Philippine Bar Association’s 122nd anniversary, some lawyers in the audience quickly suggested a legal enticement: exempt certain agencies from the government’s cramped pay scales.

The PBA’s theme was “The Rule of Law for Good Governance,” and Abad related how it applies to government budgeting. He ticked off certain reforms in spending that led to more money for education and health care. Like, budgeting has switched to line item, that is, specific instead of lump sum. Carry-over allocations were stopped; henceforth, agencies that fail to use their funds as planned lose it the following year. Payments of government salaries and benefits were modernized to stop theft and ghost employees. Overspending (for kickbacks) was curbed, notably in rice imports, which had put the government in debt of P177 billion in 2008-2010.

Reforms in spending also cause project delays, though. Abad gave as example the public works department’s benchmarking, by region, of types and prices of usual construction materials: cement, sand, gravel, re-bars. And that again requires technical experts.

Government spending is crucial in kicking up poor economies. Low government spending, coupled with depressed exports, was blamed for the GDP slowdown in 2011 to 3.8 percent, from the previous year’s 7.3 percent. Pinpointed as slow then were highway, transport, and agricultural infrastructure projects.

The government has since begun building, albeit cautiously, new air and seaports, roads and bridges, and irrigation systems. These perked up the economy to 6.6 percent in 2012 and 7.8 percent in the first quarter of this year. Still, it was criticized as jobless growth, since unemployment rose to 7.5 percent and poverty stayed as is for six years at 28 percent.

The government needs to refocus on inclusive progress, Abad acknowledged. It cannot just wait for GDP growth to trickle down to the poor, but deliberately make it from bottom up. He said one way to do this is to use the budget to wipe out patronage institutions.

*      *      *

The father of a rape victim is seeking the removal of a college president for abetting the crime committed on his daughter. In a letter to Angeles City mayor Ed Pamintuan, the father said the appointment of the college president would open other females to sexual abuse. The mayor has not heeded the appeal, although other parents support it. It was the mayor who placed the president of the government college.

The college president was dean of a private university when his subordinate teacher raped the student, then 16, in 2006. Indicted for the heinous offense, the teacher had fled to the Middle East but was repatriated recently. The victim is undergoing psychiatric treatment.

Late last year the victim charged the college president as well with abusing her as a minor. In her complaint, she recounted how the man, then the dean of her private school, in effect had set her up for the rape. She said the dean and the teacher had inveigled her and a female classmate to go on a dinner-date that ended up in a girlie bar. During the date, the dean allegedly ordered her to ride alone with the teacher, and at the restaurant to massage the latter and turn off her mobile when her worried parents called.

The father had confronted the two men when they took the daughter home past midnight. To forestall the father’s filing of an administrative complaint for sexual harassment, the dean allegedly instructed other students to state that the minor willingly had joined the date. And when the rape took place weeks later, the dean allegedly covered up for the offender and barred the girls’ parents from entering the campus.

The complaint against the college president is awaiting resolution by the justice department.

*      *      *

To become world-class in whatever craft, one has to spend 10,000 hours mastering it, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The Outliers. Willie Nepomuceno completed his 10,000 hours in comic impersonating as a student-activist in the 1970s. His favorite subjects back then — the emerging dictator in Malacañang and military generals — weren’t particularly fond of humor, and rewarded him with jail time during martial law.

Consequently breaking into showbiz a decade later came naturally for Willie Nep. He has since performed on television, radio, and stage, in the Philippines and abroad, as a succession of Presidents FVR, Erap, and P-Noy. He mimics political, media, and entertainment celebrities so well that they sometimes can’t tell anymore which is which.

Truly world class, Willie will be featured on cable Channel News Asia on Monday, June 24, at 8:30 p.m., in the show “Conversations With.” The weekly show is running a series on Asian political satire, and Monday’s episode is entitled, “The Master Impersonator.” Guess who Willie Nep will spoof.

*      *      *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

E-mail: [email protected]

Gotcha archives on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459