LETTERS FROM THE AGNO
>> Tuesday, May 6, 2008
‘Shoot to kill’ for third world consultants
MARCH L. FIANZA
Benguet Rep. Samuel Dangwa said the Beckel-Aritao road that links the provinces of Benguet and Nueva Vizcaya is the longest farm-to-market road ever as it does not come up to the standard width. Our terrain dictates that for safety reasons, mountain roads should be wider than the normal width measurement prescribed by the DPWH.
But that is no longer thought of because beneficiaries of foreign funds in third world countries succumb to the dictates of consultants assigned by foreign lending institutions. That simply means our government plows back to the foreign lending banks the same money that we borrowed from them by paying the consultants huge amounts. In most cases the consultants are young, inexperienced and know nothing about the area assigned to them.
I was informed by a reliable source that the work plans, drawings and programs for several sections of the Benguet-Aritao Road Improvement Project (BARIP) was changed after its bidding was already won. Of course, the original contract price was reduced. Why the contract money was reduced and where the deducted amount went are things known only to the lending agency, their consultants and whoever represented us in the deal.
According to some contractors who cemented part of the Benguet-Vizcaya road, pavement width from edge to edge measured at 6.1 meters. Although, in most sections, the contractors concreted the width at 5.5 meters – dangerous for two buses cruising towards each other and meeting in a certain point on the narrow road. DOTC Director Bong Mandapat can dip his finger here because it concerns the safety of commuters.
Foreign funding institutions dictate the terms and conditions of the loans, including the choice of supplier for equipment and material. Benguet had this experience in the early 90s during the implementation of the La Trinidad flood control project that was funded by Japan . The contractor, consultants, suppliers were all Japanese. Filipinos participated, but only as sub-contractors.
The same thing happened again in the reconstruction of the Halsema highway in the late 80s. Foreign economists say that is the effect when countries agree to “globalize.” Third world countries that are hungry for development have no choice but to accept the terms set by the financiers.
Common sense and hindsight say there is something wrong in the contract, but for other reasons unknown to the public, country leaders and signatories agree to it. Look at what they lead us into. It now looks like “globalization” has spawned a new breed of “public servant-politicians” in our midst.
While it is true that lending institutions dictate the terms and conditions of loans to their borrowers, getting the money from them is not always worth the risk. Paying it back is too taxing. Unwittingly, the loan beneficiaries become captive clients of a deal they could not have agreed to in the first place, if they knew the nitty-gritty surrounding the agreement.
Globalization in agriculture too has successfully placed our farmers in an unfamiliar playing field. Promises of better opportunities for all proved wrong as only the countries with the technology to produce better crops benefited from the inter-country trading. News that onions and garlic harvested from Taiwan and China were bigger and cheaper that even our own farm officials allowed corrupt traders to import them and flood the local markets were alarming enough.
But the country does not seem to run out of rip-offs. Following a series of senate investigations on the controversial ZTE – NBN deal that have yet to wrap up, we hear that fees paid by the Department of Agrarian Reform to their consultants in projects for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program reached a high of one billion pesos.
The solution that my NPA (No Permanent Address) friend, a practical thinker recommended was to “kill” all the consultants, anyway no one will care. But what he really meant was to stop acceding to foreign consultants and for us to dictate to the lending agencies our own terms because it is us who pay back the loans anyway. He further says that the country should now start thinking of withdrawing membership from international treaties that make this country even poorer. –
marchfianza777@yahoo.com
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