Punchline
A plagiarist at the city hall
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
SOMETHING very wrong is happening at the Dagupan City Hall.
I am in receipt of two pictures of an art illustration that points to a potential case of theft of intellectual property or plagiarism by someone who claims to be a key official of the Belen Fernandez administration.
I refer to the original artwork done by Visionarch for the city government titled: “Aerial Perspective of Zone 1 – Future Central Business District.” It is a futuristic perspective that shows a layout of various modern buildings in the district.
The other picture shows the exact perspective and illustration but this time labeled as “Smart Dagupan City is an Ecosystem of Smart Initiatives” with marked arrows pointing to specific buildings and vacant areas ostensibly identified as locations of offices (?) for the Smart Operation Center, “Governance, Environment, Education, Economy, Health and Mobility” concerns.
At the bottom right side is the ASEAN logo positioned on top a quote: “At the Center of Good Governance is the Smart Operation Center” making it appear that the concept is endorsed by or in compliance with a mandate from ASEAN. Really now?
What floored many at the city hall was the shameless claim found at the bottom left side of the illustration: “Design by: Prof. Nicanor O. Melecio, MBM, Project Director.”
I scanned the tampered design in search of an attribution or credit to Visionarch as the source of the perspective design. Nothing! Mr. Melecio unabashedly claimed the submitted work as a product of his own ultra ‘creative’ mind. (Apparently, it was not the first time he claimed a work submitted by others to be his. I was told he also made a presentation on flooding in the city prepared by DOST, but claimed it to be his! Mr. Melecio must think so low of Dagupeños (including Mayor Belen) that he thinks he can easily get away with his predisposition to plagiarize.
Any professional, particularly a MBM holder, worth his salt will never omit the name of the source of an original material, but apparently Mr. Melecio thinks otherwise. Tsk-tsk.
Show me a lazy plagiarist and I will show you a phony that has no qualms boasting that he is the original without batting an eyelash.
* * * * *
PAMRC VS CDRRMC. So what is Mr. Melecio up to now? He already succeeded in making the Lim administration albeit briefly, and now the Fernandez administration (and I believe the Espino provincial government, too) acknowledge that he is an expert and an authority on environmental issues without as much presenting proof of his capability. Does anyone know of any paper he delivered before an international or national forum that recognized him as an authority on environment? Pray tell!
From the plagiarized material, he claims he is the ‘Project Director’ of e-SMART OPERATION CENTER since February 2016. My bet is he cajoled Mayor Belen into initiating the project with him as project director given his ‘expert credentials’, and the tampered work of Visionarch was his proof that he knows what it takes to be e-Smart! Gosh, with just minor diddling and doodling with the elements he picked out from foreign presentations, he became an overnight expert.
He described his work as project director as “Focal Area: INSTRUMENTED (Intensity meter, Automated weather station, Tsunami early warning siren, Wet/dry tidal sensor, CCTV) INTERCONNECTED Dedicated PCs linked to RIMES, Atlas Pacific Data Org, Geofon, Phivolcs EQ Bulletin, Phivolcs TEWS Visualization, Phivolcs Tsunami Advisory, PAGASA, PDRRMC, NDRRMC, OCD, LiPAD, USGS, thru internet-landline-VHF-satellite.)…etc. How’s that to better impress the public when all that mumbo-jumbo simply means “to monitor reports”!
And, as head of the Public Alert and Response Monitoring Center (PARMC), he claims he supports the City Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Council (CDRRMC) when in fact he duplicates many of the mandated functions of CDRRMC.
As Mr. Melecio tells others, PARMC was created by Mayor Fernandez so he can do research on the “underlying causes of flooding” in Dagupan City, to predict rainfall and the impact of earthquake and tsunami. So he goes about it by having a roomful of charts and computers to impress upon visitors how important his task is.
But isn’t flooding basically an engineering function and concern? And, predicting and analyzing weather is reserved for accredited scientists? What credential does Mr. Melecio have to undertake these two activities when he is a mere technical consultant of the city government? Because he is Mr. MBM? (By the way, can consultants head and direct government operational units? Only in Dagupan City?).
What he’s not telling the public is the fact that managing and compiling the enormous ‘scientific data’ are mere emergency workers, all 10 with no experience as environmental or weather data analyst! And since Mr. Melecio himself does not have the credentials to head a PARMC operation, we have a blind-leading-the-blind situation at the city hall. How can he make the city government believe that his data are officially instructive unless, of course, his tact is to dish out reports and data from the DOST, Pag-Asa, etc., and then claims these as his, as usual.
In the absence of any real technical work to be done, I can only surmise what the PARMC staff does on a daily basis – they are functioning as his personal gofers and ‘scientific’ props like the charts and computers, to showcase his ‘important’ assignment and position.
(Speaking of gofers, one of his staff reportedly resigned mid-last year after Mr. Melecio forced him to wash his soiled briefs that had his shit on it. Mayor Belen ought to look into this because Mr. Melecio’s obnoxious conduct in that incident reflects on her being his lenient boss).
But what is it that PARMC does that CDRRMC cannot do with all the training and equipment at its disposal? I believe nothing except that Mr. Melecio cannot head CDRRMC. I surmise that Mr. Melecio, a mere consultant, succeeded in convincing Mayor Belen to provide him with a fully-staffed office at his disposal, and the mayor granted it. Could that be why he tells others that Mayor Belen is gullible?
* * * * *
WHAT CREDENTIALS? Why Mr. Melecio even makes it a point to make it known that he is a volunteer yet his contractual engagement as technical consultant pays him P30,000 a month, is beyond me. Why the double-talk? To make it appear that he is doing all these for love of Dagupan, not for himself? Please spare us inferior mortals the drama.
Except for being an MBM holder (a tag he appends to his title), he has not completed nor enrolled in any formal course on anything related to technology nor environment. His submitted profile at LinkedIn confirms this.
He claims he has had “extensive” involvement in “environmental management planning and monitoring for Agno River Flood Control Project, Allied River Improvement Project, San Roque Multi Purpose Dam Project, Sual Coal Fired Thermal Power Plant, Northern Cement Plant, North Eastern Pangasinan Air Shed, Pantal Sinocalan River Quality Management Area.” Wow! Someone should nominate him for ASNA award for being an accomplished environmental scientist!
I’m surprised that nobody in city hall bothered to verify these claims. But in fairness to him as a MBM graduate, one can presume that his involvement, if true, was largely in developing management strategies. But I seriously doubt that he was engaged as an environment-cum-power specialist as he wants mayors to believe. These organizations have access to the best and authoritative minds in this country.
So it looks like he had taken Mayor Belen again for a ride with his glib talk about his unfounded ‘expertise’, this time on science and technology. If there’s one person qualified to head the e-Smart center in the city, that would only be Bitstop’s Wilson Chua! If Mr. Melecio chooses to learn from him later, I guarantee he will be more than qualified to volunteer as e-Smart project head of fourth class towns.
Right now, Mr. Melecio’s recent credit-grabbing of Visionarch’s work should already tell Mayor Belen that she hired a fake. The longer he remains as PARMC head and project director of e-Smart center, the longer the undeserved embarrassment of the Fernandez administration remains.
Visionarch’s work became Melecio’s idea.
This is the original perspective prepared by Visionarch and submitted to the Dagupan City government in 2014.
This is the tampered perspective of Visionarch’s work being owned by Prof. Nicanor O. Melecio in 2016.
(For your comments and reactions, please email to: punch.sunday@gmail.com)
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