Category: Data Journalism

Break the corruption chain!

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“The new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our plan to end poverty and ensure lives of dignity for all, recognizes the need to fight corruption in all its aspects and calls for significant reductions in illicit financial flows as well as for the recovery of stolen assets.”

This message, from United Nations Secretary Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon?, offers a strong narrative for the global observance tomorrow, December 9, of International Anti-Corruption Day

Break the Corruption Chain— that is the theme that run though the global campaign led by the United Nations and its partner civil society organizations around the world.

This year’s event focuses on how corruption “undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to human rights violations, distorts markets, erodes quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish.”

The campaign #breakthechain also highlights that corruption is a cross-cutting crime, impacting many areas. It shows that acting against corruption is imperative to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.

Corruption, the UN notes, “is a complex social, political and economic phenomenon that affects all countries. Corruption undermines democratic institutions, slows economic development and contributes to governmental instability.”

Corruption “attacks the foundation of democratic institutions by distorting electoral processes, perverting the rule of law and creating bureaucratic quagmires whose only reason for existing is the soliciting of bribes.”

Even more tragic, “economic development is stunted because foreign direct investment is discouraged and small businesses within the country often find it impossible to overcome the “start-up costs” required because of corruption”

On 31 October 2003, the UN General Assembly adopted the United Nations Convention against Corruption and requested that the Secretary-General designate the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as secretariat for the Convention’s Conference of States Parties (Resolution 58/4).

The Assembly also designated 9 December as International Anti-Corruption Day, to raise awareness of corruption and of the role of the Convention in combating and preventing it. The Convention entered into force in December 2005.

Governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, the media and citizens around the world are joining forces to fight this crime. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are at the forefront of these efforts.

The government of the Philippines is a state party signatory to UNCAC.

Message of Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General, on International Anti-Corruption Day

Global attitudes towards corruption have changed dramatically. Where once bribery, corruption and illicit financial flows were often considered part of the cost of doing business, today corruption is widely — and rightly — understood as criminal and corrosive.

The new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our plan to end poverty and ensure lives of dignity for all, recognizes the need to fight corruption in all its aspects and calls for significant reductions in illicit financial flows as well as for the recovery of stolen assets.

Corruption has disastrous impacts on development when funds that should be devoted to schools, health clinics and other vital public services are instead diverted into the hands of criminals or dishonest officials.

Corruption exacerbates violence and insecurity. It can lead to dissatisfaction with public institutions, disillusion with government in general, and spirals of anger and unrest.

The United Nations Convention against Corruption provides a comprehensive platform for governments, non-governmental organizations, civil society, and individual citizens. Through prevention, criminalization, international cooperation and assets recovery, the Convention advances global progress toward ending corruption.

On International Anti-Corruption Day, I call for united efforts to deliver a clear message around the world that firmly rejects corruption and embraces instead the principles of transparency, accountability and good governance. This will benefit communities and countries, helping to usher in a better future for all.

Paris and its climate legacy for future generations

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By Titon Mitra*

AS WORLD LEADERS converge on Paris from 30 November to 11 December, the importance of arriving at an ambitious yet implementable agreement on climate change action has been graphically underlined by the fact that, based on UK Met Office data for 2015, for the first time, global mean temperature at the Earth’s surface will have reached 1°C above pre-industrial levels (data from January to September shows 2015 global mean temperature at 1.02 °C [±0.11°C] above pre-industrial levels).

We are already experiencing the adverse impacts of a warming climate: 14 of the hottest summers since 2000; rising sea levels; changing rainfall patterns; increased droughts; and more erratic and destructive storms. Only those who choose to willfully ignore the ample scientific evidence available – and the disturbing news coverage we see regularly – can deny that climate change induced by human actions is happening and its consequences are indeed very dangerous.

The Paris agreement will require compromise and importantly a recognition that the burden to take action will fall disproportionately between the developed and developing world. The key principle that has to be adopted with genuine commitment is that of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”. This means that each and every one of the 200 or so countries that will be present will have to commit to take actions, the scope and scale of which will differ according to their technical and financial capacities. The richer countries will need to take on a greater share of that burden and support the lesser developed.

Over 150 countries have submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – the actions they will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The Philippines has committed to reduce carbon emissions by 70 percent from 2020 to 2030 but conditional on financial aid and associated technical support being provided by developed countries.

Based on today’s level of public and private investment and the stated climate mitigation actions, developing countries will need to bridge an annual funding shortfall of as much as $2.5 trillion from 2015-2030. Even if these funds were secured, the reality is that the current combined mitigation actions will account for only 86 percent of green house gas emissions and still result in a temperature rise of 2.7°C. A below 2°C target – the minimum we should be striving for – will require considerably more in terms of funding and commitment.

Climate change action indeed should not and need not be seen as a sunk cost but rather as an investment in the future and a catalyst for a new era of innovation. Current technologies available to us will not be sufficient. Governments will need to create the incentive structures through carbon pricing and greater subsidies to accelerate innovation and to create the break-through technologies. The private sector needs to see that these technologies will significantly add to their bottom line.

Everyone will also need to commit to low carbon lifestyles to set the market demand. This will require both a collective international and national vision of a below 2°C trajectory and a low carbon economy beneficial to people and the planet.

It should be understood that keeping global temperature rise to below 2°C of the average pre-industrial level may not be enough to avert dangerous consequences. But the 2°C gives us a target to focus upon, a rallying point to catalyse collective action. While we should continue to be hopeful for Paris, we should also prepare for the fact that we may not be able to move too far from the 86 percent of greenhouse gas emissions covered by the current INDCs.

If that is all we achieve, it is nevertheless a good first step. It is a foundation that can be built upon by putting in place transparent and robust mechanisms for measuring, monitoring and reporting progress. We should reconvene every 5 years and adjust INDCs. The consequences of continuing increases in temperature hopefully will create the realization among leaders and their political constituencies to take much more ambitious action.

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) has done what we can for now to accompany countries on the road to Paris. From formulating INDCs, Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, National Adaptation Plans, climate finance readiness, policies and legislation for low carbon futures and other programmes, UNDP has helped over 130 developing countries access and deliver over $2.3 billion in mitigation and adaptation initiatives. UNDP has worked with vulnerable populations within countries, including women, girls, youth, indigenous people and remote communities to adapt and build their resilience to the inevitable consequences of climate change. Whatever the final outcomes of Paris, UNDP will continue to accompany countries as they work on their climate actions.

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon delivered a very clear message recently. He said: “Success in Paris depends on you. Now is the time for common sense, compromise and consensus. It is time to look beyond national horizons and to put the common interest first. The people of the world – and generations to come – count on you to have the vision and courage to seize this historic moment.”

For the sake of the world we will bequeath to our children, one hopes that Paris is listening.

* Titon Mitra is the Country Director of the United Nations Development Programme in the Philippines.

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About UNDP
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves quality of life for everyone. On the ground in more than 170 countries and territories, we offer global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations. www.undp.org

TESDA’s pork money mill: Who gets how much, how?

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SO WHAT if pork money or earmarks for legislators line the budget of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TEDA)? Who gets how much, and how?

Why, in the first place, do legislators have to course their pork monies to TESDA for allotment to private Technical Vocational Institutions (TVIs)?

TESDA Director General Joel Villanueva has expressed a sense of powerlessness when it comes to how pork funds lodged at his agency should be expended, and for which TVIs.

Villanueva told PCIJ last week that legislators, through TESDA’s directors and managers at its regional and provincial offices, are the ones who get to accredit and select the TVIs.

“They were the ones who dictated the costing, the partners, ‘yung ibang tools,” he said, referring to lawmakers who had already channeled their pork to the TVIs through TESDA. Villanueva added that the legislators get to identify which TESDA unit should manage their pork, and the officers of these units in turn get to enroll the service of TVIs.

“The funds are given to the regional and provincial offices,” he said. “Ayoko namang sa akin ma-sentro lahat, kaya sabi ko, kayo mag-manage niyan… ibang-iba ako kaysa sa nauna sa akin dito (I didn’t want everything to be centralized under me so I told them, you manage that… this is where I differ from my predecessor).”

By Villanueva’s account, TESDA has turned into a reform and reformist agency, in part because it had a controversy-ridden past under his predecessor. Augusto ‘Buboy’ Syjuco Jr. was TESDA’s boss.

While he was serving as a congressman of Iloilo’s second district from 1998 to 2001, Syjuco has been charged with graft for alleged misuse of his pork-barrel funds. That, however, was just the beginning of Syjuco’s entanglement with pork and the courts.

Since 2013, the Office of the Ombudsman had filed graft charges against Syjuco before the Sandiganbayan four times.

Just last March, the Ombudsman filed a new criminal case against Syjuco for the purchase of P9.25-million worth of books using TESDA money, through a printing contract that was awarded sans public bidding.

The Ombudsman indicted Syjuco for awarding the contract in July 2006 to Grand C. Graphics, Inc. to print 250,000 copies of a book that he himself wrote, Salabat for the Filipino Soul Book II and which he described to be “a book of Filipino virtues” and “a career guide for Filipino children.”

But Villanueva’s depiction of a TESDA now fairly high in the integrity meter is not one shared by some TESDA employees and partner training institutes.

Two senior employees of TESDA told PCIJ a different story – of “scholarship vouchers” awarded to favored private contractors by TESDA’s regional and provincial offices, in exchange for commissions of 20 to 35 percent of contract cost paid up– front or at the close of the program, always in cold cash.

One of the insiders explained, “At the end of the program, when it’s time for the PO to pay the chosen schools, that’s when there are ‘arrangements.’”

“Uso sa mga PO (provincial offices) ang ganyang kalakaran (Such shenanigans are popular at the POs),” said one of the insiders. “Since PO disburses the scholarship vouchers to their chosen private schools, and the chosen private schools will report their scholars, true or false, there is no way to find out talaga.”

By contrast, the source added, “ang public schools at TESDA training centers, totoo talaga ang naka-declare kasi talagang mahihirap ang mga clients (with the public schools and TESDA training centers, what’s declared is true because the clients are really poor).”

By the account of the source and another TESDA insider, the amounts involved are huge. One of the sources said that the collection, per contract, “would range from 100K (100 thousand pesos) up, depending on the number of scholarships awarded to the schools, which amounts to millions per school.”

The second source and TESDA insider rued that the moneymaking ventures continue to thrive at TESDA because many of its officers and senior employees own either a school or an assessment center with TESDA accreditation.

“The officers of TESDA with have schools or assessment centers, that’s how they earn,” said the second insider. The source added that scholars or schools that want to get such accreditation, in fact, do not have to pay any fees, “but centers are paid by TESDA on a per-head basis times the amount of assessment fee. So, depende ‘yun kung ano trade nila (it depends on what their trade is).”

Both sources also say that on the TESDA board sit at least two owners of schools located in Cavite, Batangas, and Metro Manila, that have been doing good business with TESDA.

“Corruption in the assessment (of scholars) happens,” the second source said, “when private schools pay back the PO, since they were allowed to participate in the assessment. Lahat ng nag-serve as TESDA representative from PO will receive from the assessment centers, JO (job order) included.” The “minimum amount” in such transactions,” said the source, “is 40K pataas (forty thousand pesos up).”

That such sums run into so many digits is not surprising since huge amounts of pork monies have poured into TESDA. In 2012, lawmakers had practically smothered the agency with their PDAF.

Of the 72 legislators who allocated a total of more than P300 million to TESDA in 2012, 68 were party-list and district representatives who channeled P284-million of their PDAF through TESDA. Four senators gave P17.5 million more. — PCIJ, August 2015

TESDA’s 11 TVIs: Sister firms, tied to politicians, not SEC-registered

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THEY ARE supposed to be top-rate technical vocational institutions (TVIs), which is why they bagged millions of pesos from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

Or actually, from the pork-barrel funds of some legislators that had been loaded up in TESDA’s agency budget.

But the Commission on Audit (COA), in its report on TESDA for 2013, had found them “non-compliant” with TESDA’s training rules, and their project implementation, marked with “discrepancies.” Generally, for a lot more money per seminar, they trained fewer students across shorter training periods, COA said.

The e-Fund releases portal of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) show that at least 19 legislators had allocated between P12.5 million and P90.95 million of their pork shares from 2010 to 2013 to the 11 TVIs named in COA’s report.

Read Part 6 of our series on “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy”:

* 11 TVIs at TESDA: Sister firms, linked to pols, not SEC-registered

At least two of the 11 TVIs – Ilaw ng Bayan and I-Connect Solutions Tek Bok Inc. – were even described by state auditors as having not one of the livelihood programs that “could be associated with any of the programs per training regulations or competency-based curricula.”

Two others have evident political connections.

The first,, Ilaw ng Bayan, which has Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte as an incorporator (as well as its president, according to its Facebook page), has two SEC registration records. It first registered in 1993 but that is now listed to have been revoked. It registered again in 2015 for this purpose: “to establish an educational scholarship/dormitory shelter, and/or other assistance for deserving disadvantageous students.”

Also referred to in its documents as the Quezon City Skills and Livelihood Training Center, Ilaw ng Bayan’s course offerings include “bartending, hilot, food and beverages, barista, housekeeping,” according to its Facebook page.

The second I-Connect Solutions Tek Bok Inc. listed the residential address of its board members Mark Rainier T. Luz (board chairman), Danilo Lingad, and Carla Bumagat as its office address, too. But that same address belongs to two more entities: Margin Multi-Ventures and Construction Corporation, a private company, and the Party-list group 1-ABAA (1-Ako Babaeng Astig Aasenso), which ran but lost in the 2010 elections. 1-ABAA became controversial in 2010 when it proposed a law putting a 10-year cap on the validity of a marriage contract.

Margie Tajon was at that time named as the 1-ABAA president. A certain Margie Tajon Luz also appears as the president and board chair of another TESDA TVI, Gabaymasa Foundation. Inc. In December 2014, the Ombudsman filed graft and malversation charges against Luz and Gabaymasa for their involvement in the so-called “fertilizer fund scam.”

Three others, which altogether received nearly half the total pork that the 19 legislators coursed through TESDA in 2013, are sister companies. Asian Spirit Career Foundation, Inc., Asian Touch International Training Institute, Inc., and Phil-Best Entrepreneurs were incorporated by same persons.

In an effort to understand why, despite these COA findings, these TVIs remain in the good graces of some legislators, PCIJ checked out the files of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), mined DBM’s databases on PDAF releases, and visited with some of them at their offices. – PCIJ, August 2015

TESDA: Pork, pricey seminars, dicey docs, favored contractors

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TWO PICTURES in stark contrast have been drawn about one agency: the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

The first, a none-too-flattering one, by the Commission on Audit (COA), which speaks of “deficiencies” by the dozen in the agency’s implementation of its massive training and scholarship programs.

The second, glowing and pretty, by President Benigno S. Aquino III, who has heaped generous praise on TESDA on many occasions, citing it as an exemplar of performance in the executive branch, in terms of the volume of scholars that it has trained in recent years.

Among other things, COA says that there have been many “deficiencies” in TESDA’s scholarship programs funded with pork monies and awarded to private training institutes, including missed number of target beneficiaries, overpricing of supplies and training courses, contracts awarded without bidding, improper selection of beneficiaries, seminar attendance sheets of doubtful integrity, and the holding of different seminars on the same day and time for the same dubious beneficiaries, but at different locations.

Read: Part 5 of our series on “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy”:

* TESDA’s billions: Goody story turns sorry with pork

COA’s 2013 annual agency report on TESDA said such deficiencies were particularly present in its implementation of two major programs that had been expanded using lumpsum monies that had been loaded up in TESDA’s budget that year: Training for Work Scholarship Program (TWSP) and Cash-for-Training Project (C4TP).

The report also revealed what the state auditors said was “non-compliance” in the implementation of TWSP by TESDA’s partner Technical Vocational Institutions (TVIs) or partner training entities from the private sector.

For 2012 and 2013, data from COA and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) showed that TESDA received a total of P427.09 million in PDAF from legislators, including 19 who gave their pork monies to projects implemented by at least 11 apparently favored TVIs.

TWSP had been funded under TESDA’s regular budget in previous years. In 2012, TWSP was expanded, while C4TP was started as “a program funded from DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development) designed to focus on the potential contributions of disadvantaged youth to nation building by engaging them in gainful employment by providing relevant, high quality and efficient technical education and skills development by TESDA.”

In 2012, TESDA received additional monies from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) of legislators. It also got Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds that year, one sum being its own DAP allocation, and another representing a big portion of the DAP assigned to the DSWD.

But it was when TESDA had expanded too fast and its budget had grown too fat that COA found major discrepancies in project implementation. This was even as COA cited that TESDA had reported good to outstanding results on its “key performance indicators” – i.e., number of scholars trained, graduated, assessed, and employed, and number of seminars conducted – in 2013.

In the end, the picture that emerges is that while TESDA has been striving to surpass the targets of its regular programs, its more generously funded training tracks have gotten caught in a web of conflicting interests – politics, commerce, and corruption – involving some TVIs favored by a number of legislators, and favored further by some TESDA officers at the central, regional, and provincial offices.

It’s an image that TESDA Director General Emmanuel Joel Villanueva obviously doesn’t cherish. Speaking with PCIJ by phone recently, he said that his problem with COA is it does not update its prior year’s reports to reflect agency action on its findings in subsequent months.

“Ang ano ko lang sa COA, every time they come out with report, they do not lift a finger to update the report and say naayos na. Hindi raw nila policy ‘yun.. (My concern with COA is, every time they come out with a report, they do not a lift a finger to update the report and say that the problem has been addressed. They say it’s not their policy),” Villanueva said

He also said that despite COA’s adverse findings on TESDA in COA’s report for 2013, “since I took over, at no time has COA issued a notice of disallowance or notice of suspension on me or TESDA.” Villanueva became TESDA chief in July 2010.

COA found at least 11 TVIs non-compliant or with deficiencies in implementing TWSP: Asian Touch International Institute Inc.; Asian Spirit Career Foundation, Inc.; Meridian International College of Business, Arts and Technology; Phil-Best Entrepreneurs; Ilaw ng Bayan Foundation, Inc.; Informatics Computer Institute Valenzuela; I-Connect Solutions Tek Bok Inc.; Matuwid na Landas Foundation, Inc.; Serbisyong Pagmamahal Foundation, Inc.; Mechatronics Technologies, Inc.; and BSC Technological Institute, Inc.

PCIJ research on these TVIs reveals that two of them had already ceased operations in 2014, after cornering multimillion-peso contracts from TESDA. Two others have clear political connections, while at least two more also appear to have links with a Napoles-like network of dubious nongovernment organizations (NGOs). One TVI meanwhile was incorporated in the same year that it snagged multimillion-peso projects with TESDA. Three others are sister-firms that share the same set of directors and owners.

Altogether, according to COA and DBM reports, there were at least 19 legislators who enabled these TVIs to secure contracts with TESDA: Representatives Mar-Len Abigail Binay, Monique Yazmin Lagdameo, Ma. Rachel Arenas, Oscar G. Malapitan, Romero Federico S. Quimbo, William Irwin C. Tieng, Cinchona C. Cruz-Gonzales, Sigfrido R. Tinga, Sherwin N. Tugna, Antonio C. Alvarez, Victorino Dennis M. Socrates, Arnel M. Cerafica, Cesar V. Sarmiento, Tobias Reynald M. Tiangco, and Winston Castelo. – PCIJ, August 2015