Solon seeks probe into DFA passport machine

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20090305-192431/Solon-seeks-probe-into-DFA-passport-machine

By Lira Dalangin-Fernandez
Reporter
INQUIRER.net

Posted date: March 05, 2009

MANILA, Philippines – An investigation into the awarding by the Department of Foreign Affairs of its P859-million machine readable passport and visa project to a French company, is being sought by a lawmaker at the House of Representatives.

The Francois-Charles Oberthure Fiduciaire is the same firm that printed two years ago the P100 “Arrovo bills, referring to the error on the name of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

In filing House Resolution 1038, Anakpawis partylist Representative Rafael Mariano asked the committee on foreign affairs to conduct the inquiry to find out the “validity and wisdom” of the award and to determine if the shift from a build-operate-transfer mode of procurement to a government-funded project was in accordance with existing laws.

The project was originally awarded in January 2000 to BCA International, a 100% Filipino-owned corporation, but it never got to implement the project because the DFA sat on it.

In 2005, the department rescinded the contract with BCA on questions of its financial capacity.

In June 2008, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas approved the post qualification bid of P859.7 million by Francois-Charles Oberthure Fiduciaire for the “supply, delivery, and commissioning of a system for the production of Electronic Passport Booklets” and consequently, the Notice of Award was given to the firm. This time, the undertaking would be funded by the DFA Passport Reserve Fund.

“There is a need to inquire what were the DFA’s compelling reasons for abandoning the original BOT scheme in undertaking the Machine Readable Passport and Visa project (MRPV) which would have entailed no cost to the government, particularly on whether the shift in the mode of undertaking the MRPV project to one funded by the government was more beneficial and advantageous to the Philippine government than the cost-free BOT scheme undertaken by the BCA International,” Mariano said in his resolution.

“There is a need to inquire whether it has become an unwritten but official policy of the government to favor foreign firms in the award of government projects to the detriment of firms which are 100 % Filipino ownership,” Mariano said.

He said the French firm was the same company that supplied some 80 million P100 bills with the misspelled surname of the President. The same firm was involved in the $34-million contract to supply passport-making equipment to Kenya, which its government scrapped due to the absence of a bidding process, Mariano added.

Abu Sayyaf’s new generation threatens Philippines

02/22/2009 | 06:06 PM

MANILA, Philippines — Not long ago, the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group was dismissed as all but dead, thanks to a much-heralded joint effort against terrorism by the U.S. and the Philippine military.

Now there is fear that the Abu Sayyaf may be coming back.

The group is blamed for a spate of kidnappings in recent months, including the latest — that of a Sri Lankan peace worker on southern Basilan Island earlier this month. Abu Sayyaf raised more than $1.5 million last year through ransoms, and its ranks rose to 400 members last year from 383 in 2007, a confidential government report noted. Also, new leaders are rising to take the place of those captured by U.S.-backed troops.

The rebirth of Abu Sayyaf raises renewed fears of terrorism. So far Abu Sayyaf has focused on raising money through kidnappings, but it is likely to pursue high-profile assaults to reassert its stature as a terror group, the report noted. Abu Sayyaf has also allowed foreign militants, mostly members of the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, to make the region their home.

“As long as they are there, they can provide safe haven for Jemaah Islamiyah where they can train the next generation of bombers and terrorists. That’s why they’re a threat,” said Col. William Coultrup, who heads the U.S. counterterrorism forces in Mindanao.

Abu Sayyaf, which means “Father of the Swordsman” in Arabic, was founded in 1991 in Basilan province and supported by Asian and Middle Eastern radical groups. It came to the attention of the U.S. in 2001, when the group kidnapped three Americans among 20 people taken from a tony Philippine resort.

Abu Sayyaf was also thought to be sheltering Indonesian members of Jemaah Islamiyah, including Umar Patek and Dulmatin. The two are suspected of masterminding the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people in 2002, and then fleeing to Abu Sayyaf strongholds in Mindanao to evade an anti-terror crackdown in Indonesia.

The Phillipine military did not have the funds for a full-out assault against Abu Sayyaf, so American troops came in with weapons, combat training and surveillance. They helped rein in a brief but brutal era of mass kidnappings, bombings and beheadings by the militants. Washington has poured millions of dollars into the Philippines in military assistance and civic projects.

Amid its problems in Iraq, Washington hailed the success against Abu Sayyaf, and life and commerce bounced back on Basilan. But in 2004, Abu Sayyaf and Indonesian militants were blamed for a bombing that ignited an inferno in a ferry near Manila Bay, killing 116 people. Abu Sayyaf also espoused a more violent “jihad,” or holy war, in Mindanao, where more than 120,000 people have died in decades-long Muslim separatist unrest.

Last year Abu Sayyaf kidnapped at least 12 people in Jolo, Basilan and three other southern provinces, including a TV news team, according to the government report. Several captives have been ransomed off since, but 10, including three Red Cross workers taken on Jan. 15, remain in Abu Sayyaf’s hands. Snatched from a car at gunpoint on Sulu province’s Jolo Island after inspecting a jail water project, the missing Red Cross workers — two Europeans and a Filipina — are being held in the lush jungle.

On Feb. 13, Sri Lankan peace activist Umar Jaleel was snatched from his Basilan residence.

Abu Sayyaf’s comeback is led by a new generation of leaders, said Maj. Gen. Juancho Sabban, who heads a Jolo anti-terrorism task force.

“All the Abu Sayyaf’s ideologues are dead, the ones left behind are bandits,” Sabban said. “The support they’re counting on from other countries has vanished. Now, everybody’s on his own, trying to raise money through kidnappings. They say they’re fighting for a cause? No way.”

Out of the 24 original leaders and militants whose faces were on a wanted poster widely distributed across the sprawling archipelago, only nine remain at large. The rest are dead or in jail, their faces marked off one by one. Abu Sayyaf’s oldest, ailing commander, one-armed Radulan Sahiron, is missing, and vanished after a Dec. 7 clash that killed his cherished white horse, according to Sabban.

Among the new leaders is the colorful Albader Parad, who was just a scrawny foot soldier with an M203 grenade launcher dangling from his small frame nine years ago. Parad was involved in a 2000 mass kidnapping from the Sipadan resort in nearby Malaysia that netted 10 Europeans and 11 other people. When the kidnappers allowed a group of journalists to visit the hostages, Parad swiped the watch of an Associated Press reporter.

A military dossier seen by the AP described Parad as coming from a poor family where most relatives belonged to the Abu Sayyaf or had links to it. He has amassed 20 million pesos (more than $400,000) from a string of early 2000 abductions, some of which was invested by relatives in passenger transport and coconut farmlands, according to the military dossier.

“We want the military to pull out. If not, we won’t talk to anyone,” Parad said in a video aired in early February by the ABS-CBN news network, boldly showing his face to the camera while a bunch of masked gunmen stood behind him in the woods near Jolo’s Indanan township.

Behind the scenes, there are widespread reports that Parad is privately seeking money to free the hostages.

Parad was one of the earliest new Abu Sayyaf commanders to emerge, but he has plenty of violent company at the top. He has been joined by at least three others, according to the government security threats report and a military official.

The report said two new commanders now lead their own factions — Nurhassan Jamiri from Basilan and Sulaiman Pattah from Jolo, both predominantly Muslim provinces in the country’s most destitute region.

Jamiri, who is in his 20s, has been linked to kidnappings and the beheading of 10 marines during a 2007 clash. Pattah, a one-armed militant, gained notoriety for allegedly helping lead last year’s kidnapping of popular TV news anchor Ces Drilon and her two crewmen in Jolo.

Another new commander is Furuji Indama, marine Lt. Col. Leonard Vincent Teodoro told the AP. He helps lead the same faction as Jamiri and has been blamed for kidnappings and other terrorist attacks in Basilan, said Teodoro, who has overseen assaults against the two.

Even the government concedes that the battle against one of Southeast Asia’s most violent groups is far from over.

“I think they’ve morphed into something else, just like … criminal gangs,” Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro told the AP. – AP

Migrants advocacy group alarmed over new OFW deployment policy

MARK JOSEPH H. UBALDE, GMANews.TV
01/23/2009 | 06:29 PM
MANILA, Philippines — A group of cause-oriented groups for overseas Filipino workers has expressed concern over the government’s new policy to aggressively market Filipinos for jobs abroad.

The Philippine Migrants Watch (PMRW) said the new policy is embodied in Administrative Order No. 247, which orders the Cabinet to support the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) “so it can aggressively deploy” Filipinos without much “institutional hurdles.”

Such a policy “is tantamount to promoting migration as economic tool,” said Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy and a member of PMRW.

The alliance said the added function of the POEA is against the government’s policy of non-dependence on OFW deployment as a solution to save the economy.

The Philippine government’s policy under Republic Act 8042 or the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 on overseas labor says that overseas employment should not be promoted by the government.

“While recognizing the significant contribution of Filipino migrant workers…the State does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development,” reads RA 8042’s declaration of policies.

Sana, who is a member of the PMRW, fears that the regulatory function of the POEA would be set aside to make room for the aggressive marketing of OFWs in other countries.

“AO 247 is a written and explicit evidence that (the government is) dependent on OFW remittances,” Sana said.

The POEA, which is under the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment, was created in 1982 by Executive Order No. 797 and is mandated to regulate the overseas employment industry, facilitate the employment of aspiring OFWs and protect their rights. (See other core functions in this link)

PMRW added that AO 247 is also against PGMA’s previously backed policy of strengthening the regulatory function of the POEA.

According to the group, the President’s instruction was contrary to the “intent and spirit” of Republic Act 9422 which strengthens the regulatory functions of the POEA thereby repealing Sections 29 and 30 of RA 8042 on deregulation.

“The President was with us in this campaign which took 11 years before RA9422 was finally enacted in 2006. She certified this bill as urgent in the 12th and 13th Congress but now, she is setting it aside in favor of aggressive marketing of our people overseas,” PMRW said.

The signing of AO 247 came on the heels of the global financial crisis, which economists fear would result to the economic recession and more retrenchments for Filipinos in the country and abroad.

The $15-billion annual remittance from OFWs is tagged as the lifeblood of the Philippine economy, boosting the country’s dollar reserves. The global economic crisis has threatened the jobs of thousands of Filipinos employed in export-dependent countries like Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore, which have felt the brunt of the US-led crisis.

“Is this the way for government to respond to the global economic meltdown?” PMRW asked in a statement, “Should we not be doing the paradigm shift by veering away now from an economic dictum that is quite dependent on external markets?”

Recruitment consultant Emmanuel Geslani, however, told GMANews.TV that the government simply has to admit that it cannot survive without the OFWs’ contributions.

Geslani said that RA 8042 should be reconciled in order to justify the new mandate of the POEA.

Despite the new policy, Geslani believes the POEA would not give up its task to protect Filipinos in securing jobs abroad. – GMANews.TV