JEDDAH, 25 August 2006 - With the war in Lebanon, the nursing exam leakage scandal and the continuing killing of leftist activists in the Philippines it is no wonder that an ongoing Senate inquiry into missing funds from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) has garnered hardly any attention from the media and the public. But these missing funds are a symptom of a systematic looting of OFW funds by happy-go-lucky government officials, and should not be overlooked by civil society.
The missing funds in question are 500 million pesos that disappeared during the Ramos administration. The money was lent to the Smokey Mountain Development and Reclamation Project in 1995. Just this week former Labor Secretary Nieves Confesor, in a letter to the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, chaired by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, said that she had never been told of the payment of the P500 million to the project by then OWWA Administrator David Corpin.
At the time, Confesor was embroiled in the Flor Contemplacion controversy, which would trigger her resignation a few months later, after Contemplacion was hanged in Singapore for murder. Confesor blames this case for distracting her attention from the OWWA Board, of which she was chairperson. According to the OWWA charter, the disbursement of the P500 million loan should have been approved by the board, but it was not.
According to Migrante International’s Connie Regalado, who testified before the Senate committee on the OWWA fund mess, she has seen documents relating to this loan, which she said the Commission on Audit also had. These documents reveal that the P500 million loan, plus an additional P500 million in accumulated interest, have yet to be repaid to OWWA by the Smokey Mountain project.
What makes this missing funds scandal even more alarming is that the Arroyo administration is actively obstructing the Senate probe by not allowing certain government officials to appear before it, or even sending key officials on extended assignments abroad so as to make them unavailable.
This is what happened to the Commission on Audit’s resident auditor to OWWA. After initially testifying before the committee, this auditor has suddenly and conveniently been sent to Singapore for a month-long assignment, effectively withdrawing that person from further grilling by concerned senators.
Sen. Joker Arroyo has vigorously protested about Malacanang’s ongoing efforts to block current OWWA chief Marianito Roque and Cabinet members from testifying in front of the committee. He rightly claims that this is an illegal act of the Executive branch which interferes with the work of the Legislative branch.
All of these facts make one wonder why President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is so reluctant to help the Senate in its probe. Apart from the obvious fact that she is a protégé of former President Fidel Ramos, and as such must protect her mentor from possible harm, perhaps she is also worried about additional missing OWWA funds which she allegedly used, illegally it must be noted, for her election campaign in 2004. Even if she plans on repaying the money “borrowed” from OWWA, this use of money kept in trust for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) is illegal and unacceptable. Which brings us once again to the same question: If the president has nothing to hide, why is she stopping officials from testifying before the committee?
The Smokey Mountain project was undertaken by the construction company R-II Builders, owned by businessman Reghis Romero II. He has been accused of overcharging the government for the project and his firm is currently facing such charges in a lower court. As such, Romero has told the Senate committee that he cannot testify before them since the issue is currently subjudice.
With all of this obvious corruption, which Confesor has admitted does not show good governance, it is no wonder that a Filipino-American anti-corruption watchdog has this week urged the Bush administration to bar President Arroyo and her congressional allies from US soil.
The Philippine Anticorruption Movement in the USA Inc. (Pamusa), headed by Francisco Wenceslao, invoked Bush’s Presidential Proclamation 7750 which suspends entry into the US of individuals involved in public corruption “that has a serious adverse effect in specified US interests.”
Pamusa said PP7750 could be used against Arroyo and her allies because it prevents “such people from coming into the United States to enjoy the fruits of their corruption and sends a strong message that the United States is committed to supporting international efforts in combating public corruption wherever it occurs.”
I don’t think the Bush administration would ever use this proclamation against the Arroyo administration, since it is a close ally of the United States, but it would be nice if the US Congress said it was considering asking the Bush administration to probe the Arroyo administration’s instances of alleged corruption. That would indeed make corrupt Philippine government officials squirm!
Comments or questions? E-mail me at: [email protected]. Visit my blog at: http://rasheedsworld.blogspot.com.
