Punchline
Unsolicited advice
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
THE brouhaha over the management of the Dagupan seafood processing plant was to be expected. There are vested interests and there are vested interests in enterprise projects funded by government.
Personally, I’ve always maintained that government should never run a business venture – not the national, not the local. I had opposed the idea of the city government dipping its fingers into the seafood processing plant because sure as the sun will rise from the east, that facility will become a monstrous wasted white elephant once crony-crocs are appointed to operate it.
If the Dagupan City government could not even make the Malimgas market viable as projected, nor could it do a job of maintaining an expensive dredging machine, can it be expected to make a multi-million processing plant viable? I seriously doubt it.
I had suggested early on that the city government proceed on a build-operate-transfer with the private sector, with enough incentives to draw in the investors. But obviously, that unsolicited suggestion was hardly heard in the thick of the excitement over the prospect of who would build the facility.
But what’s done is done. The facility will now have to be operated, and perforce by a government agency. It’s a proposition that’s quite risky but certainly a better option than having the city government risk its scarce resources.
The move of the Dagupan City council to appoint the BFAR as administrator (and operator) of the facility provides one concrete benefit to the project – it knows and understands the ABCs about fish products and the processing system. I don’t believe there’s anyone in the city hall today or tomorrow who has the educational background and extensive experience to operate the venture. So, yes, the most qualified can be found in BFAR. It’s a move in the right direction but not good enough to guarantee the plant’s viability.
More than understanding the process, there is the equally major and serious concern about viability and profitability that the city council must address. Profit as an operating goal is imperative to keep an enterprise viable but that is an oxymoron in governance. Government and its agencies don’t have the orientation nor the mandate to compete and earn revenues by working its ass off in the open market. Governments simply dream about operating services with a balanced budget. What it is good at is to simply collect fees and taxes, but never to earn its keep through competition and skillful management for profit. In this regard, I expect BFAR to fail. It’d be like asking skilled machine operators in a printing press to publish a newspaper on their own. Yes, BFAR can maintain laboratories, conduct research and tests for quality control but manage for profit? Perish the thought.
And here’s the bottomline – as a government agency, it can only hire personnel based on set government standards and salary scale. How can it hire a suitable manager with extensive experience in seafood processing and marketing when government can’t even pay the a governor, congressman or mayor more than P100,000 monthly?
Here’s an unsolicited advice for the city council: Keep the BFAR as interim manager for the launch period but direct the implementation of a Lease-Operate-Transfer scheme within 12 months after its launch.
Without the private sector’s motive for profit factored in, the seafood plant will be washed away to the sea by a tsunami of incompetence through no fault of BFAR.
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POOR IMAGE OF DAGUPAN PNP. This corner welcomes P/Supt. Romeo Caramat as Dagupan City’s OIC of the Dagupan police.
There’s nothing like having a new leadership, fresh blood, in any organization after some time if we are to expect reforms and innovations to be introduced each time to strengthen the organization. This early, I see his gesture to try to match if not exceed the performance of his predecessor as a very encouraging sign for the community.
Mr. Caramat, there is certainly something you can do in no time to exceed P/Supt. Sonny Verzosa’s accomplishments. People suggest you seek to restore the lost credibility of the city police in enforcing the law vs. illegal gambling and yes, make the city’s cops more visible.
Acting on the complaints of residents, The PUNCH has pointed out over the months the proliferation of the “Drop-Ball” operations in many barangays in the city disguised as barangay perya. These illegal gambling fronts that take bets as high as P1,000 like nobody’s business are in gross violation of the law yet nobody has ever been arrested nor hauled to the police station for a mere citation in the police blotter. Sadly, Mr. Verzosa did not lift a finger.
Before he gets comfortable in his brand new air-conditioned office, Mr. Caramat ought to walk in incognito on some of the “Drop-Ball” venues at night, and see how families end up poorer each day. He might notice too that most are situated just a stone’s throw away from the police outposts in the barangays and, yes, homes of barangay kapitans. If that doesn’t spell “police protection racket”, I don’t know what to make of law enforcement.
A single direct order – “Stop the Drop-ball” – will do wonders for the city’s cops’ image. But will Mr. Caramat truly seek to do better than Mr. Verzosa or will he be content just being like his predecessor? I guess the residents will know soon enough.
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Then there is also the running feud over jurisdiction between the police and the city’s POSO as traffic enforcers. The POSO has been doing the yeoman’s job in maintaining order in the city streets, without the presence of uniformed cops on the streets to help reinforce the authority of the sunburned POSO guys.
Ironically, while most urban cities take to strong police visibility in the streets as crime deterrent, I certainly did not see this policy adopted by Mr. Caramat’s predecessor. At the very least, uniformed cops should walk the talk as protectors, literally…take to the sidewalks and streets on foot, not on their motorcycles and patrol cars.
Nothing can be more reassuring to an unsuspecting resident than to meet well-groomed cops looking smart in their crisp uniforms walking in tandem looking out for troublemakers in the streets.
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