CORRUPTION INCORPORATED

by Bernie Lopez

Here are some of the corruption trends in our government, so people will understand how far we have gone, and how blatantly brave people have become in being corrupt. If you want to get angry, read this.

 

First of all, it is very odd that one from the highest places accused of corruption will suddenly launch an anti-corruption drive, and even visit a far away place where one is given flowers by people who received some meagre government support for their project. It is a way of diverting the issue but such PR strategies do not work.

 

According to sources inside the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA), you can pay P150,000 with an official receipt or P100,000 without receipt for a license for your product to be approved for commercialization. This has been going on for a decade now but no one seems able to stop the practice. The best way to prove this is to get the list of products approved and go to the companies that own them and ask for the official receipt. Many will of course say the receipts are lost.

 

According to the same FPA source, there were 1,049 products approved by the FPA for 2006. If we assume only 10% are stupid enough to pay P150,000 instead of P100,000, we can say that about 900 products do not have receipts. Multiply this with P100,000 and we get a cool P90 million which goes to the pockets of FPA officials every year. In a decade, that is almost a billion.

 

This is how multinationals are able to get a license and sell products which are banned in other countries. The P100,000 is nothing compared to the huge profits in selling banned chemicals. This type of corruption translates into people getting sick or dying from exposure to such toxic chemicals. It is easy to find out what are the banned chemicals. Get the list of approved products from the FPA and send it to the US FPA and its European counterpart to find out which are banned there but freely sold here and with license.

 

Corruption has filtered down to the lowest level of local government. According to a local source in Nueva Ecija, a barangay captain was demanding an Isuzu van for a barangay construction permit for a big mall. He got the idea from the governor who was earlier demanding P100,000. The same source said that even the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) is learning the ropes of corruption at an early age.

 

According to a seaweed farmer, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) had a program to build seaweed farms in scattered areas. The cost of the farm is P20,000 but they bloated it to P100,000. If there were 20 such farms, we are talking here of P2 million. Although this amount may be relatively small, it is a 500% increase, which is beyond the 'permissible corruption' Jun Lozada talks about.

 

According to an inside source in the Philippine Coconut Authority (PHILCOA), officials were asking for P5 million out of a P15 million project for the eradication of coconut pests in order to approve it. That is a meager 30% and will pass Lozada's standards of good governance.

 

According to an inside source at the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), an LRTA director once demanded a million pesos from a Japanese multinational in order for him to release check payments. Since the checks run into millions of dollars, a million pesos will again pass Lozada's standards. The problem was, the courier for the one million peso cash bribe, an assistant of the director who suddenly disappeared with the money.

 

This was a standard practice at the LRTA for any kind of disbursements, whether the small expenses for security or the big ones for rail management and operations. At one time, security guards at LRT/MRT stations wanted to go on strike because they were not being paid or their salaries were delayed because the bribes had to be paid first before the salaries.

 

According to sources at the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), a particular practice is not really corruption because it is legal. The LLDA exacts an 'environment fee' from the hundreds of firms polluting the lake from their shoreline operations. This adds up to millions per year. As long as you pay, it does not matter if you pollute. Nobody will look into your operations, unless a particular LLDA official pinpoints a victim for additional income.

 

Everybody is happy. The LLDA gets its income to stay afloat and operate. The companies get their income. It is not surprising that a recent study reveals the presence of about 300 or so heavy metals in Laguna Lake.

These corruption stories are the tip of the iceberg. There are many more corruption stories but no one wants to tell them because they do not want to get involved.

 

They say a third of our trillion-pesos-a-year budget goes to corruption. That is very believable. We are one of the most corrupt nation in the world not for nothing. It is ingrained in our culture. It is institutionalized, and at times, like the LLDA case, legalized. Jun Lozada's 'acceptable' level of corruption or 'controlled greed' of 20% is a scary statement not just because it is happening, but it is starting to be accepted. There are no acceptable levels of corruption, Jun. Corruption is corruption. 

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