livelihood groups of overseas Filipino workers and their families reveals major errors in a project that an OFW leader and a government report said was used solely for the 2004 elections.

“Their promise to us is that there will be an OFW Groceria loan, followed by OFW Botica, and thirdly, that each member will have a loan of P200,000. However, these did not reach us [except for the grocery] loan, which we even had difficulties [operating],” said Lutgarda Zapanta, the leader of OFW BZ Chapter.

Zapanta was referring to the OFW Groceria, a micro-lending project for OFWs now hobbled by the inability of beneficiaries like her to pay back government loans that came in the form of merchandise.

In October, OWWA notified Zapanta that her group had a 22-month past due loan of P45,834.80.

“ Chairman, pano na ito?” Zapanta said of the collection notice. “Two years na, wala na ang grocery. Wala nang pera.” A recent report from The Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration puts the onus of Zapanta’s predicament on the “atmosphere” of the 2004 elections.

OWWA, which now handles the two-year old Groceria project, noted that a “shallow appreciation on the real objectives of the project” led a number of OFW families and dependents to deliberately organize themselves into groups so they could avail of the Groceria loan in exchange for elections favors.

“ There was no clear orientation or direction of the project,” the report dated June 30, 2006 admitted.

This comes to light at a time when another poll event is imminent, and as the government rehashes its shuttered micro-lending scheme.
‘ Habhab’

The OFW Groceria Project is a non-collateral, interest-free loan consisting of P50,000 worth of merchandise for OFW organizations. It disbursed loans to 543 groceries amounting to P27,158,342.85 as of June 30, 2005.

The OWWA report said 352 out of the 387 established OFW Groceria are still considered “operational,” It also noted however that 35 percent or 205 of the total 587 OFW Grocerias have declared bankruptcy.

OFW Groceria Project spokesperson Reynaldo Tayag told the OFW Journalism Consortium that the Department of Labor and Employment began the project using P3 million from the Presidential Social Fund. He said that problems occurred during this phase of the program before OWWA took over its management.

The project became part of the OWWA’s reintegration program, announced in March 2004, or three months before Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was re-elected president.

When OWWA took over, Tayag got rid of the DOLE representatives and replaced them with “more qualified community development officers.”

“ Napabayaan din ng napabayaan yung project,” he observed. “The problem is they [DOLE organizers] did not monitor in the first place. Habhab yung ginawa nila e.” “Habhab” is a Tagalog word to describe a way of eating using one’s lips, much like a pig does with its snout.

Tayag said filing legal cases against errant borrowers was an option but OWWA decided to issue collection letters instead. “Konsensyahin mo na lang,” he said. “Wala namang nakukulong sa utang, e.”

Plea market

The stamp on Zapanta’s September 29, 2005 letter read, “Officially Received” by the Office of the President. Written in Tagalog, the letter asked Mrs. Arroyo to permit Zapanta’s group to regard their unpaid loans as an expansion of their grocery business.

“ That’s why I did not worry for my members anymore because I have pleaded in my letter that whatever program that has been handed down to us be continued and, whether the project was successful or not, to instead leave them to us,” Zapanta said.

It was also her way, she said, of reminding the President of the OFW groups’ contribution to her poll victory.

She claimed her group was influenced on their choice of who to vote for in the presidential elections because they were promised to benefit from the Groceria project. “Every group has about 25 members and I have organized twelve of them. How much votes could one get from [each group]?” she asked. However, she said that only seven of the dozen groups she organized received the grocery loans four months after Arroyo was declared President.

“ Before the grocery was handed (to us), ‘they’ contacted OFW chairmen because they know who are the persons who handle people. So I was used, all of us chairmen, to organize the OFWs,” Zapanta claimed.

Zapanta has not received a reply from the President’s office.

Dole out

The OWWA report says by the “dole-out” mentality of OFWs “killed off” the grocery loan project’s “greater aim.”

Hence, the project’s collection rate has declined from 65.74 percent for 387 grocery stores in September of 2005, to 53 percent for 543 stores as of June 30, 2006. The report also said that the remoteness of the areas where borrowers lived caused low-repayment levels.

But OWWA’s Tayag said repayment would not have been a problem even by groups in these areas had the OFWs followed the loan agreement.

Tayag explained that under DOLE guidelines, OFW groups should have opened a bank account under the group’s name ands deposited their payments. Groups were not allowed to withdraw from the account until their deposits totaled P50,000. Even then, they needed the advice of DOLE. Groups were also required to submit copies of their bank book and bank statements and provide a monthly status report to the Labor department.

Zapanta claimed she was told by DOLE to open bank accounts “under our own names.” Tayag said many more groups misread the bank requisites. and did not have a Labor representative look into the bank details.

Hence, collection had been difficult. “Other groups have members and leaders [who] are now nowhere to be found,” Tayaf said.

Using OWWA’s figures, losses could amount to P10.25 million, part of which the government spent to purchase grocery items from the retailer SM.

Slack

ZAPANTA herself admitted dipping into the Groceria funds but only because her daughter was hospitalized. Her daughter has recovered, but she has yet to pay back the money she “borrowed.”

Her predicament and the precarious collection rate of the OFW Groceria project come to bear on a new lending scheme signed by the President on August 10, 2006. Executive Order 558-A authorizes the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to provide direct lending in poor provinces and municipalities.

Senator Pia Cayetano called the scheme a “political dole out.” She sees a connection between the timing of the new lending scheme and the forthcoming elections. “The credit scheme is in danger of being politicized, especially with the coming elections in 2007,” she said in a statement, “because priority will likely be given to close allies and followers of local politicians who wield power over the field personnel of DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development).”

Zapanta knows this only too well.
– OFW Journalism Consortium