Businessmirror september 17, 2016

“Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for what we’ve done in Flint, not give a political speech.”—The Rev. Faith Green Timmons, pastor of the Bethel United Methodist Church in Flint, Michigan, after she cut off Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump when he attacked Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a speech. AP

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“You do not go to the Philippines and say, ‘I’m going to give you something, I’m going to help you develop and I’m going to help you grow, but these are the checklist[s] that you must comply with. We will lecture you on human rights.’”—Foreign Secretary Perfecto R. Yasay Jr., appealing for mutual respect between the allied nations, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “We cannot...forever be the little brown brothers of America,” he said. AP

“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers.”— Edgar Matobato, a former militiaman who testified under oath before the Senate that President Duterte, when he was still a city mayor, ordered a liquidation squad to kill criminals and opponents in gangland-style assaults that left about 1,000 dead. AP

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Saturday, September 17, 2016 Vol. 11 No. 343

SERVICE PROVIDERS MAY HAVE TO SHOULDER COST OF WORKERS’ REGULARIZATION

DTI, DOLE present new option to address ‘endo’

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44 years too long: The martial-law victims, ‘desaparecidos’ and the families left behind OurTime BusinessMirror

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44 years too long: The martial-law victims, ‘desaparecidos’ and the families left behind

By Cody Cepeda | Special to the BusinessMirror

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EPTEMBER 21, 2016, marks the four decades since the harrowing days of the Marcos dictatorship. To many, the events are beyond recall, made hazier by those who claim the martial law years are the golden years of the Philippines.

The horrors, however, continue to haunt those tortured and victimized under the regime, with families of those who disappeared taking it on their shoulders to carry the great warring fight for justice.

Meanwhile, President Duterte has been nothing but candid on his decision to allow the burial of the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos, in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

When Marcos will be buried at the Libingan is up for the Supreme Court to resolve.

This is not surprising since President Duterte has openly identified himself as a supporter of the strongman, even praising him as being the best president the Philippines has ever seen.

On September 21, 1972, President Marcos swore by God’s name and set his hand on Proclamation 1081, affixing his signature and the seal of the Republic on the piece of paper that gave birth to the darkest times of Philippine history.

Two days later, he appeared on national television, declaring the entire Philippines under martial law.

In the proclamation, Marcos said martial law was not a military takeover, but a necessary action to save the Philippines from rebellion and communist overthrow.

It was, in his own words, a prelude “to our dream of a new society— a society of peace, order and reformed politics for a brighter Philippines.”

But as he urged for law and order to be maintained throughout

the nation, he also suspended the writ of habeas corpus, which did not just give the military the power to detain any person without proper judicial trial, but also the freedom to abuse this power to indefinite lengths.

The people’s lawyer

“HERMON [LAGMAN] was on the way to a meeting with his associate, Victor Reyes, when they were abducted and subsequently disappeared without a trace,” said Nilda Lagman-Sevilla, sister of Hermon.

Hermon was a student council president and editor in chief of his high-school paper. In college, he served as managing editor of the Philippine Collegian, and the editor in chief of the Law Register, the University of the Philippines College of Law newspaper.

W hen the uncompromising student-activist passed the bar, he became a militant advocate of labor rights. Nilda said, “He offered his services for free, especially to poor workers pursuing cases of unfair labor practices.”

Hermon was also a volunteer lawyer of the Citizen’s Legal Aid Society of the Philippines (CLASP) and a founding member of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG).

Herman was first arrested and imprisoned for two months without charges in 1972. He was again detained in 1976, but was released on the same day. After his second arrest, labor groups had grown increasingly militant; Hermon served as legal counsel to many of these

unions that showed open defiance of Marcos’s martial rule through pickets and strikes.

In 1977, however, Hermon disappeared with his associate without a trace and was never seen again.

Searches and inquiries by relatives failed to ascertain the faith and whereabouts of Hermon and Victor.

Nilda’s mother and eldest brother tirelessly searched for Hermon in military camps in Metro Manila, even writing to then-President Marcos and Philippine Constabulary chief Fidel V. Ramos regarding her brother’s case—but to no avail.

Hermon’s disappearance inspired the Lagmans to sustain his labor and human-rights advocacy.

They founded then-Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND), where Nilda serves as the cochairman. Through FIND, they are able to work for measures that prevent the commission of enforced disappearances.

“This is a family crusade. We in the Lagman family don’t want other families to suffer the same anguish and harrowing experience we went through when Hermon disappeared.”

Primitivo ‘Tibo’ Mijares, the whistle-blower

the younger sister of Liliosa Hilao. Liliosa, a student-activist and writer, was the first martial law detainee to be tortured and killed in camp.

“They were meeting at Marie’s house when there was a knock on the gate. It was the military unit from Crame. They saw my brother’s UP ID so they were taken to camp.

Ang ginawa sa brother ko hinubaran, tinali sa isang armchair and hot spotlights were placed on his face.”

When it was Liliosa’s turn to be tortured, she went to the bathroom and locked herself in. They heard a bottle break from inside and when Jan and his friends broke the door down, they saw Liliosa on the floor, foaming from the mouth. She drank muriatic acid.

Jan said Liliosa committed suicide, but Liliosa’s family believed she was forced to drink the acid.

Either way, Liliosa’s body was split from the mouth down to the stomach when it was returned to her family.

“They took her innards and, for some reason, they also took her brains and put it in a pail,” Susan said. “They gave that to her parents together with her body.”

Upon Liliosa’s death, the torture on Jan and his friends continued. They were released after five months when Liliosa’s family filed a complaint. “When my brother was released, may posttraumatic stress siya, but after a few months, he gained the courage to go back to UP.” In 1977 he left his house to file for graduation and never made it back. His first arrest and disappearance were four years apart.

Through the years, Susan Quimpo continued the fight for her brother’s justice. Other than writing Subversive lives: A Family Memoir of the Marcos Years, she also spearheaded Duyan ng Magiting, a coalition to oppose the burial of Marcos in Libingan ng mga Bayani.

T he coalition has amassed many groups and people to come together, from people in their 70s to young college students. “I’m very happy because it has become an intergenerational fight.”

Jan Quimpo, incarceration by school ID

“I WAS the last in the family to see him,” said Susan Quimpo, youngest sister of Jan Quimpo.

It was October 1977 when Jan told his sister Susan he was going to UP Diliman to file for graduation. Before he left the house, he reminded her to save him dinner.

“He was only carrying a jacket and notebook at that time. He never came home.”

Jan was already a student leader before martial law was declared in 1972. He wrote actively for the student paper of Philippine Science High School, and was only a freshman in UP Diliman when he was caught in 1973 by the Constabulary Anti-Narcotics Unit (Canu).

Susan said during martial law, meetings of more than two people were illegal, so Jan often went to a schoolmate’s house for meetings.

This schoolmate was Marie Hilao,

go, grandson of Mijares, vows to commit to his advocacy to campaign against Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos should he run for the next presidential elections.

JC also took up the project to revive and produce an updated version of The Conjugal Dictatorship with his father, Joey, to counteract historical revisionism. The new edition of the book would feature more citations, references and firsthand accounts of those still alive that confirm the events. This, in JC’s hope, will make the literature a stronger body of evidence.

“This is what we’re focusing on right now, but of course, we’re being careful. We don’t want another Boyet in the family.”

PRIMITIVO “TIBO” MIJARES was one man who held a unique position during the Marcos regime. As a journalist, Mijares worked closely with Marcos, serving as his confidant and right-hand man.

Being a newspaperman, Mijares stuck to what he knew best: Putting words down on paper.

But in 1975, Mijares went to the United States to testify as state witness in Congress, revealing the secrets and abuses of Marcos by publishing his opus, The Conjugal Dictatorship, a year after.

Joey Gurango, son-in-law of Mijares, said, “I think what my father-in-law produced is probably the most compelling body of work that you can refer to today.”

Mijares knew about the martial law declaration before it happened and was even one of its architects. In fact, it was Mijares who suggested to Don Eugenio Lopez in 1962 to handpick Marcos as his presidential candidate in 1965. “Tibo was there at the beginning, but then he turned. So his work is the only real insider’s account of what transpired.”

A few months after publishing The Conjugal Dictatorship, Mijares disappeared. His 16-year-old son Boyet received a call from someone a year later, telling him his father was still alive and wanted to see him. Hopeful for a reunion, Boyet set out to meet his father.

“Boyet disappeared and his family looked for him,” Joey recalled. “The next I heard, they were informed where the body was. It was found in an empty lot in Antipolo.” Joey said the people living around the area said they heard helicopters the night before they found Boyet’s body.

It bore signs of torture. His skull was bashed in, his eyeballs gouged out, his genitals mutilated and his body covered in multiple stab wounds. It was alleged Boyet was repeatedly tortured in front of his father. Mijares’s body, however, was never found.

Nineteen-year-old JC Guran-

A ZUHISA TAK EMUR A has an idea for helping Japan’s struggling economy: Entice younger consumers to spend more by providing them a financial and emotional cushion.

Takemura, a professor of psychology at Waseda University in Tokyo who focuses on decision theory, said if younger consumers in Japan had a bigger “safety net” via expanded spending on education and child care, they might feel encouraged to dole out more themselves.

“According to a theor y of developmental psycholog y, in order to develop stimulus-seeking behavior, safety might be needed,” Takemura said. “For example, if a child is raised by parents in a good environment, the child may be more likely to seek new things and take risks.

This might be related to consumption behavior, as well.”

While this concept may be anathema to laissez-faire economists, it might well take a radical approach to bring change to Japan—where people in their 20s and 30s have had their behavior shaped by decades of deflation, economic stagnation and shrinking job opportunities. In many other developed nations, the younger generations are helping drive nondiscretionary spending.

The labor department order governing the contractualization of workers

Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez said this proposal, presented to business groups on Thursday by the DTI and the Department Continued on A2

Cradle of the brave

Fund-raiser for elderly frozen treat seller tops $250,000

Spending on elderly

THE latest supplementary budget in Japan—a ¥3.5-trillion package—instead contained funds to tackle Japan’s demographic issues and regional revitalization, as well as cash handouts to low-income pensioners. Many older people on fixed incomes tend to focus on buying essentials.

As a country ages, it is natural that the government will spend an increasing amount on the elderly popu lation. Stil l, compared w ith other aging countries, such as Italy and Finland, Japan spends far less on social-welfare programs for the younger population. Among 33 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD)-membernations, Japan ranked 25th in spending on family benefits in 2011.

Despite budget limitations, Japan should at least spend the OECD average to encourage a more positive consumer environment, Takemura said. Increasing the present social-welfare budget by 50 percent would suffice, he said, though it would take several years to foster feelings of safety and security for consumers. Japan has, for years, spent less on social programs than other developed nations, according to the OECD Social Expenditure Database. Bloomberg News

DAO 18-A S. 2011

NO doubt Marcos built infrastructures that continue to benefit Filipinos today, but behind these were thousands of human-rights violations, forced disappearances, deaths and corruption.

Granted, there were people who benefited greatly from the regime or were unaffected, but Joey shares that if people back then were living in certain parts of the Philippines, such as Ilocos, they most probably didn’t get affected negatively.

“You will always find people who have something good to say about the regime, so I’m not surprised people are saying the Marcos regime was the golden years. Then again, we don’t need 51 percent of the population to say the regime was bad to make it bad,” Joey adds.

Susan said, “It’s not an act of closure or unity; it’s poking and reopening wounds. Libingan ng mga Bayani is the cradle of the brave, and ’yung mga tunay na heroes were the people Marcos had raped, killed, oppressed and tortured. Hindi si Marcos.”

If throngs of Marcos supporters claim the Marcos regime was the Philippines’s golden years, then a multitude would say otherwise: That the regime was built on deception and—if anything— martial law was the truth that revealed the fiction.

One prescription for Japan’s revival: Spend more on safety

K

@c_pillas29 @davecaga

he Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has put forward a scheme for companies to continue contractualization through service providers, but with the assurance of eventual regularization for their workers.

INSIDE

B4 Saturday, September 17, 2016 • Editor: Efleda P. Campos

By Catherine N. Pillas & David Cagahastian

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HICAGO—What began as a small effort to help out an 89-year-old Chicago man who was spotted pushing a paleta cart and selling the frozen treats to help pay bills has brought in more than $250,000 in just four days.

Joel Cervantes Macias launched the online fundraiser on GoFundMe for “Fidencio the paleta man” on Friday with a goal of $3,000. A paleta is Mexican treat similar to a popsicle. The fund-raising page shows more than a quarter-million dollars raised from more than 11,000 people as of early Tuesday morning.

Fidencio Sanchez told the Chicago Tribune through a translator on Monday the money means his paleta-selling days may be over and that he “will be able to rest more at home.” AP

Our time

SERVING THE ELDERLY

Nurse Adelyn A. Duyag checks the blood sugar of Edmundo Paseo, 60, a constituent of Talisay City, Cebu. Duyag is a City Health Office volunteer and a member of the Nurse Deployment Project. MAU VICTA

b4

u.k. approves EDF’s $24-B HINKLEY NUKE PLANT The World BusinessMirror

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‘WE’RE FRIENDS, BUT DON’T LECTURE US ON HUMAN RIGHTS’

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he Philippines’s Yasay said top diplomat said the Philippine government on T hursday it would never still regards the US as a condone unlawful killings. He said trusted ally, but will not the Philippines accept lectures on human shared the US goal rights as a condition for for full respect of human rights. receiving American help.

Foreign Secretary Perfecto R. Yasay Jr. said, “We cannot...forever be the little brown brothers of America,” as he appealed for mutual respect between the allied nations.

Yasay sought to reassure an audience at a Washington think tank about Manila’s commitment to positive relations with the United States, its former colonial power.

His address came amid strains in the relationship because of recent remarks by the Southeast Asian nation’s new president, Rodrigo R. Duterte, who has waged a bloody war on the drug trade that has been criticized by the US. More than 3,000 suspected drug users and dealers have been killed since he assumed the presidency in June.

Last week President Barack Obama canceled a formal meeting with Mr. Duterte at a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders after he used the phrase “son of a b___h” in warning that he wouldn’t accept lectures from Obama on human rights.

Yasay said the Philippine government would never condone unlawful killings. He said the Philippines shared the US goal for full respect of human rights. He said Filipinos had fully understood about the sanctity of human life since before it was a US colony and that was at the core of its struggle for independence.

See “Human rights,” A2

Saturday, September 17, 2016 b2-1

UK approves EDF’s $24-B Hinkley nuke plant

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he United Kingdom (UK) government has approved electricite de France SA’s (eDF) controversial plan to build two nuclear reactors for €18 billion ($24 billion) in southwest england.

Hinkley Point C will proceed under the condition that EDF— which has a Chinese partner in the project—won’t be able to sell down its controlling stake prior to completion of construction without government approval, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said in a statement on Thursday.

The much-criticized guaranteed electricity price that underpins the development wasn’t changed.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May decided to review Hinkley Point at the end of July, casting doubt on a project approved by her predecessor David Cameron as a way of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

The unexpected delay came amid concerns about the scale of potential subsidy for the plants and whether Chinese involvement was a security risk.

While EDF says the development is vital for the future of the French nuclear industry, there are still concerns about the financial strain it will place on the utility.

“Britain needs to upgrade its supplies of energy, and we have always been clear that nuclear is an important part of ensuring our future low-carbon energy security,” Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Greg Clark said in the statement.

“Having thoroughly reviewed the proposal for Hinkley Point C, we will introduce a series of measures to enhance security,” and therefore decided to proceed, he said.

Vital project

THE approval crowns almost a decade of efforts by EDF to prepare for the replacement of its UK nuclear

Hybrid trains seen as viable solution to Metro congestion

10 The number of years it will take for the construction of the nuclear-power plant

fleet, acquired when it took control of British Energy Plc. in 2008.

Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive officer of the state-controlled utility, has said Hinkley Point, which will use the EPR reactor design, is key to ensuring the health of the French nuclear industry and providing work for struggling nuclear group Areva SA. “This decision demonstrates confidence in the EPR technology and in the world-renowned expertise of the French nuclear industry,” Levy said in a statement on Thursday.

The UK government will guarantee EDF can sell power generated by the plant at €92.50 a megawatt-hour, more than double current market prices, for as long as 35 years.

Nevertheless, the huge upfront cost of the development has provoked internal opposition, with Chief Financial Officer Thomas Piquemal resigning in March, saying the plant would strain the utility’s finances.

Hinkley Point, the site of the planned nuclear-power plant BloomBerg News

Internal opposition

EDF’S labor unions wanted the UK project to be delayed by about three years to benefit from feedback from reactors being built in France, Finland and China.

At Flamanville in France, where the utility is building a reactor of the same design proposed for Hinkley Point, costs have more than tripled to €10.5 billion ($11.8 billion) and construction is six years behind schedule.

EDF shares fell 0.7 percent to €11.12 at 11:56 a.m. Paris time.

Rating companies have said a decision to proceed with Hinkley Point will probably trigger a credit downgrade for the company.

Chinese role

THE project also is of strategic importance for China. Stateowned China General Nuclear Power Cor p., which is due to provide a third of the finance

for Hinkley Point, intends to take a minority stake in a similar nuclear reactor at Sizewell, and then a majority holding in another at Bradwell, which will use Chinese technolog y.

“We are now able to move forward and deliver much-needed nuclear capacity at Hinkley Point, Sizewell and Bradwell with our strategic partners EDF,” CGN said in a statement. The company said it intends to play “an important role in meeting the UK’s future energy needs.”

A blog post written last year by Prime Minister May’s new chief of staff exposed concerns about UK energy security and cast a shadow over British-Chinese relations.

Nick Timothy warned the involvement of Chinese partners in the development could allow them to “shut down Britain’s energy production at will.”

Existing powers plus a new

legal framework for investment in critical UK infrastructure will mean “the full implications of foreign ownership are scrutinized for the purposes of national security,” according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy statement.

Government intervention

“A F T ER Hin k ley, t he Br it ish government will take a special share in all future nuclear newbuild projects,” according to the statement. “ T his w il l ensure that significant stakes cannot be sold without the government’s knowledge or consent,” including EDF’s holding in Hinkley, it said.

The plant, which will take almost 10 years to construct, will provide a 9 -percent annual return if built on time and on budget, according to Levy. The UK National Audit Office estimated in July

that consumer-funded top-ups to the price for Hinkley’s electricity over the 35-year lifetime may total almost €30 billion.

“In light of a changing energy landscape, the falling cost of renewables and lower financing costs, we are not convinced that this would be the right decision for the UK consumer,” Martin Young, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London, said in a note on Thursday. For EDF, a 9-percent rate of return “ is attractive, but will come at the price of multiyear construction risk.”

Hinkley Point C will provide 7 percent of Britain’s electricity needs for 60 years, the government said. The UK has eight power stations with 15 nuclear reactors, which generate around 20 percent of electricity in the country, and almost all of these existing plants are due to close by 2030. Bloomberg News

Wage boom jolts central banks as East Europe on alert to old foe Japanese employees rarely

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IK E centra l banks else where, policy-makers in Ea ster n Eu rope h aven’t been too adept at fighting deflation. A burst of wage growth suggests they may not have to worry about that much longer.

A bonanza for workers among the former communist members of the European Union (EU) has sent paychecks soaring at a pace unseen for years, with Romanian salaries growing faster than 10 percent for nine months.

Data due on Friday will show that average gross wages in Poland, the EU’s biggest eastern economy, jumped 5 percent from a year earlier in August, near a four-year high of 5.3 percent in June, according to the median of 26 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

For Morgan Stanley, that signals inflation risks in the region are “skewed to the upside” for the first time since 2013.

The gathering threat is setting the stage for policy whiplash in nations just emerging from the slumber of deflation and price growth still below zero in three of the four largest economies in the EU’s east.

With Poland in the grip of its longest stretch of falling prices in six decades, Governor Adam Glapinski said this month the central bank is “ moving closer” to its first interest-rate increase since 2012 after having held its benchmark at a record low for a 17th month.

“This is a growing concern in all of the region,” said Roxana Hulea, an emerging-market strategist at Société Générale SA in London. In Poland “wage growth is an element that is being considered very care-

Workers at a car plant in Poland BloomBerg News

fully, given the ongoing tightening of the labor market.”

Higher salaries are buoying consumer demand that’s kept eastern European economies growing at the fastest clip in the EU. While that’s helping the bloc’s poorest countries catch up with richer neighbors in the west, productivity gains haven’t kept up, meaning there’s a greater risk that companies will have to raise prices to cover higher labor costs.

The salar y spike is the latest challenge for central banks in Poland, Romania, Hungar y and the Czech Republic. W hile policy-makers have credited def lation for propping up household spending without clouding the economic outlook, their credibility is on the line because inf lation has for years undershot their targets of between 2 percent and 3 percent.

Czech wage growth accelerated in the first quarter even as labor

productivity slowed significantly, the central bank said in its latest inflation report. In Hungary the exodus of skilled workers to more affluent European states has tightened the labor market and helped push net salaries 8.3 percent higher in the first seven months from a year earlier, heading for the fastest annual growth since at least 2008.

Hungary, Czechs

THAT pressure will gradually translate into faster consumer-price growth through next year, according to the National Bank of Hungar y, which ended a three-month rate-cut cycle in May with a pledge to keep borrowing costs on hold for an “extended period.” Czech policymakers, meanwhile, are counting on wage growth to help them meet their 2-percent inf lation target next year, a condition for removing a cap on the koruna

they imposed in November 2013 to weaken the currency.

“Labor markets have tightened sharply across emerging-market Europe, and wage growth has picked up,” Morgan Stanley analysts Pasquale Diana and Georgi Deyanov said in a report. “While this does not mean inflation getting out of control, it would nevertheless be a significant break from the recent past.”

Fo r w a r d - r at e a g r e e m e nt s used to wager on Polish rates in 12 months have priced out 23 basis points, or 0.23 percentage point, in cuts in the past three weeks and now show bets for five basis points in decreases for the next year. Koruna forwards for 12 months indicate increased anticipation the Czech National Bank will abandon its limit on currency appreciation.

W h i l e H u n g a r y ’s t h r e e year bond yields traded near a record-low on Thursday, the rate on 10 -year notes rose to the highest in more than two months, lifting the yield cur ve to the steepest in almost a year.

That’s a sign investors are betting on an uptick in inf lation and accelerating growth.

Polish Monetary Policy Council member Eugeniusz Gatnar has cited rising wages among the key reasons that the end for def lation is near, signaling the next rate move will be an increase. Still, no policy action is imminent, with Glapinski saying on September 7 that tightening won’t start until late next year if inf lation and economic growth pick up as predicted. Bloomberg News

switch jobs, ask for pay raises

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N contrast to job-hopping Americans, Japanese workers rarely jump to different companies, likely frustrating policymakers’ efforts to drive wages up.

Wages fell steadily during Japan’s long battle with deflation.

Raising them has been a focus of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s growth program, which seeks to “reflate” the economy through a cycle of higher corporate profits, worker pay and consumer spending. Abe recently said changing the way Japan works is the biggest challenge in reviving the economy, and a lack of worker mobility is one reason economists say labormarket reform is badly needed.

In economies with high mobility, such as the US, people readily change jobs to work in different companies, sectors and even regions offering higher pay.

There is a “huge amount” of turnover in the US job market every month, said Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “And it appears if you follow the paychecks of people who switch jobs from one month to the next, they see faster pay increases than do people who stay in their jobs.”

Turnover is far lower in Japan.

And low labor-market mobility has limited overall wage gains, Capital Economics said in a recent report.

Part of the problem is a lack of mid-career opportunities, as companies continue the long-standing practice of hiring mostly new graduates and employing them until they retire, said Hiroaki

Muto, chief economist at Tokai Tokyo Research Center. “Almost everyone has the same timing in hiring and leaving their work. As a system, there’s not a lot of midcareer hiring.”

“I think there are many [other] places where the job-transfer rate is high, and wages can be better priced on productivity, ability and so on,” Muto said, adding that in Japan it’s difficult to match pay to productivity due to a lack of information. Even when Japanese workers quit their jobs, it is usually for reasons other than money. Most leave to escape unsatisfactory conditions, such as personnel problems or excessive working hours, rather than to seek better opportunities.

Only 10 percent of respondents to a government survey said they left their previous job due to inadequate pay.

In contrast, an international survey by the business-networking web site LinkedIn Corp. in 2015 found 34 percent of people who left their previous job did so at least in part due to dissatisfaction with their compensation.

Japanese employees are also less likely to ask for higher pay.

Muto, who changed jobs himself last year, said negotiating salary when starting a new job is rare in Japan. A new employee typically accepts the salary their new employer proposes, he said. An unwillingness to demand higher pay could explain why changing jobs doesn’t result in pay increases most of the time. Bloomberg News

WORLD

THERMAL POWER Tahato Nishizawa (left), president and CEO of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd. (MHPS), and Masao Ishikawa, managing director and CEO

So what?

Sports BusinessMirror

SO WHAT? G

By Graham Dunbar

Petra Kvitova, Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Robert Harting—all Rio de Janeiro Olympians last month—reacted with sarcasm and shrugs to the leak from the World AntiDoping Agency database.

chRiS FRooMe: there’s nothing new here. AP

The Associated Press

ENEVA—A two-time Wimbledon singles champion, two Tour de France winners and an Olympic discus gold medalist had the same answer on Thursday to the latest leak by hackers of confidential medical information: So what?

Petra Kvitova, Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Robert Harting—all Rio de Janeiro Olympians last month—reacted with sarcasm and shrugs to the leak from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) database.

The four athletes said their use of approved medications was already widely reported or they welcomed the openness resulting from an alleged Russian-led cyber attack that Wada believes is revenge for investigations into a state-backed doping program in Russia.

“To say that Petra Kvitova suffers from asthma and uses medication for treatment is the same revelation as saying she’s won Wimbledon,” a spokesman for the Czech tennis player, Karel Tejkal, said.

German discus thrower Robert Harting, the 2012 Olympic champion, wrote on Twitter that “We don’t hide anything. Go transparency!”

“I’ve openly discussed my TUEs [Therapeutic Use Exemptions] with the media and have no issues with the leak, which confirms my statements,” three-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome said.

Kvitova, Harting and Froome were headline names among 25 athletes from eight countries—including 10 from the United States—whose confidential details of using authorized medications spilled into the public domain late Wednesday.

All three competed at the Rio Olympics, where Kvitova and Froome won bronze medals.

Also leaked was detail of asthma medication used by Wiggins, another British winner of the Tour de France and winner of a fifth career Olympic gold in Rio. “There’s nothing new here,” a statement issued on behalf of Wiggins said. “Everyone knows Brad suffers from asthma; his medical treatment is BC [British Cycling] and UCI

A8 | S

AturdAy, September 17, 2016 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao Asst. Editor: Joel Orellana

[International Cycling Union] approved.”

Wada confirmed a second round of leaked data posted online, after medical records of gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles and seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams were among four American female Olympians whose data was revealed on Tuesday.

All 29 cases revealed records of Therapeutic Use Exemptions, which allow athletes to use otherwise-banned substances because of a verified medical need. There is no suggestion any of the athletes broke any rules.

The substances identified in the leaks are typically anti-inflammatory medications and treatments for asthma and allergies.

Froome’s use of strong anti-inflammatory medication, approved by the UCI for the 2014 Tour de Romandie race in Switzerland, was widely reported two years ago.

“In nine years as a professional, I’ve twice required a TUE for exacerbated asthma, the last time was in 2014,” said Froome, who won his third Tour de France title in July. He took a bronze medal in the time trial at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics last month.

The latest round of leaks identified 10 American athletes, five from Germany, five from Britain, and one each from Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Romania and Russia.

“I am furious that the hacking group is using such insolent and illegal methods,” said Michael Ask, head of Anti-Doping Denmark.

Danish swimmer Pernille Blume, who won gold in Rio de Janeiro in the 50-meter freestyle, had “done nothing wrong,” Ask told Denmark TV2 channel. “She has followed the rules and gotten permission to use the asthma medication which she uses—like many other athletes.”

Harting was revealed to have permission to use medications during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he finished fourth.

The statement on behalf of Wiggins said the leak was “an attempt to undermine the credibility of Wada and that’s something for them to deal with.”

Wada said on Wednesday the Russian hacking group, known as Fancy Bears, had illegally gained access to its Anti-Doping Administration and Management System, or “ADAMS,” and said it included confidential

medical data.

“To those athletes that have been impacted, we regret that criminals have attempted to smear your reputations in this way; and, assure you that we are receiving intelligence and advice from the highest level law enforcement and IT [informationtechnology] security agencies that we are putting into action,” Wada Director General Olivier Niggli said in a statement.

Niggli said Wada had “no doubt that these ongoing attacks are being carried out in retaliation against the agency and the global antidoping system,” because of independent investigations that exposed state-sponsored doping in Russia.

Russian officials have dismissed the claims as ridiculous.

“How can you prove that the hackers are Russian?” Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said through a translator during a visit to Athens on Wednesday. “You blame Russia for everything. It is very ‘in’ now.”

Last month hackers obtained a database password for Russian runner Yuliya Stepanova, a whistle-blower and key witness for the Wada investigations. She and her husband, a former official with the Russian national antidoping agency, are now living at an undisclosed location in North America.

The International Olympic Committee said after Tuesday’s Wada statement it “strongly condemns such methods, which clearly aim at tarnishing the reputation of clean athletes.”

The hackers, who have set up their own web site, have not responded to messages seeking comment. Their chosen name, “Fancy Bears,” appears to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a collection of Russia-linked hackers that security researchers have blamed for a recent spate of attacks—and which Wada holds responsible for the current breach.

The group has proclaimed its allegiance to Anonymous, the loose-knit movement of online mischief-makers, and says it hacked Wada to show the world “how Olympic medals are won.”

“We’ll keep on telling the world about doping in elite sports,” the group said on Thursday. “Stay tuned for new leaks.”

FAKE PASSPORTS S

caNaDa’S wheelchair racer brent Lakatos competes in the men’s 100-meter t53-Round 1. AP

NavigatiNg Rio caN be tough R

IO DE JANEIRO—Inside the Olympic Park, there are ramps, strategically placed railings, tactile paving inside venues and more. It’s evident that experts designed the grounds for the Summer Games and Paralympics to be accessible to people with disabilities.

But outside the venues is a different story.

For those with disabilities, navigating Rio de Janeiro can range from inconvenient to daunting, something Brett Gravatt can attest to.

Gravatt is a student at Penn State who uses a wheelchair and is part of a journalism class visiting Brazil to help supplement coverage of the Paralympics for The Associated Press. Though the students are staying in a business hotel close to the main grounds, the morning commute for Gravatt through a recently developed neighborhood involves navigating his way down a dirt path, through weeds, rocks and tree roots.

His classmates walk along a sidewalk that is not smoothly paved, but made of flat stones, each several inches high, with a big space between them.

“Separate but equal,” Gravatt jokes, as he makes way to the rapid-transit station, which has a handicapped entrance and space on the bus for a wheelchair.

It’s just a taste of what life in Rio—a place with glaring contrasts between haves and have nots—is like, advocates for the disabled community say. While some improvements have been made to the sprawling city of more than

6 million to improve access for all its citizens in the run-up to the Olympics and Paralympics, including a new commuter-rail line, even organizers agree the situation is far from perfect.

“I mean, officially, all of the venues here are accessible and they are more accessible than anywhere else in the city,” said Mario Andrada, spokesman for the Rio organizing committee.

“But if you have an accessibility expert he or she will find a lot of black holes.”

It doesn’t take much to make life harder. On a recent night at the track-and-field stadium, for example, someone parked an official Rio 2016 car so close to the access ramp that no one in a wheelchair could use it—instead leaving a curb at least 3 inches high to negotiate.

And even in Centro, Rio’s upscale downtown neighborhood, the mosaic-style sidewalk does not lend itself to anyone in a wheelchair or who has trouble getting over uneven surfaces.

On paper, the rights of the disabled are well-established in this nation of more than 200 million people.

“In Brazil we have great laws but they’re not enforced,” said Teresa Costa d’Amaral, founder of the Brazilian Institute for the Rights of the Disabled Person, a group that files civil suits to help protect the rights of disabled citizens. “It’s not the laws that are the problem it’s our government.”

The issue is far worse for the city’s poor, she said.

“If you live in a favela, you often have to stay home unless you have friends or family to carry

you in and out,” Costa D’Amaral said, a narrative 38-year-old Carmen Lucia Mansur knows well.

Mansur was born with a congenital birth defect affecting her legs and limiting her mobility. Mansur has four children, and her 18-year-old son, Yuri, was born with the same birth defect.

Both Mansur and Yuri have undergone multiple surgeries, fully covered by the Brazilian government, to improve their condition. Mansur’s abilities have improved dramatically, whereas Yuri’s have not. The young man must rely on crutches to walk.

As a result of many medical absences, Yuri has been held back in school. At age 18, he began high school this year. He was initially set to attend a local school with his neighborhood friends, but discovered that the school only had stairs and was not accessible.

So he had to attend a different high school, Frederico Fellini, because it was equipped with ramps. But that caused another problem: Although the school itself is more accessible, getting there is difficult.

Mansur met with the principal to request transportation for her son because of his disability: That was denied. The principal says the school doesn’t provide transportation to anyone.

Yuri attempted to take the public bus to school on his own, but found that, once he made his way to the distant stop, if he was alone the driver would not stop.

“I worked for three years, then I had to choose between work and my kid who has a disability and I opt for my kid. Now I’m unemployed, and on a daily basis it’s difficult to get him on a bus,” Mansur said.

Yuri said the greatest difficulty is when he gets off his bus and begins his journey home. He described making his way up 41 stairs. “I go up five or six steps, and then I take a break, and go,” he said. AP

By Elmer V. Recuerdo | Correspondent

b2-1

EOUL, South Korea—Al Nasr was eliminated from the Asian Champions League on Wednesday, despite outscoring El Jaish of Qatar, 3-1, in the two-leg quarterfinal.

But there was major controversy along the way involving the United Arab Emirates (UAE) side.

Two goals in the 3-0 victory by Al Nasr in Qatar in the first leg were scored by talented striker Wanderley. The Brazilian joined Al Nasr in June from fellow UAE club Sharjah and was registered as an Indonesian national after acquiring a passport from the Southeast Asian nation.

In a statement issued on Monday, however, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) ruled the passport was fake. The striker was already provisionally suspended while the investigation was carried out. At the same time, the organization ruled, Al Nasr “forfeited” the first leg and El Jaish was awarded a 3-0 victory.

El Jaish scored the only goal on Wednesday to officially win the quarterfinal, 4-0, on aggregate and advance to the semifinals.

The AFC refused to disclose the identity of two other players currently under investigation, but according to Jack Kerr of the Sports Integrity Initiative, an organization dedicated to transparency in sport, there could be more than 30 players in Asia playing under fake documentation.

“Even Fifa and the AFC have trouble working out how many players are using fake or fraudulent passports,” Kerr told The Associated Press. “After all, given the close ties between government and sportin Asia, there may be people within the bureaucracy forging documents for players.”

In April 2015 the UAE was the focus of a similar episode, though one confined to domestic soccer. Sharjah questioned how Al Wasl’s Brazilian player Fabio Lima had ended up with an Uzbekistan passport that reportedly had belonged to a female. Within a week, Sharjah had withdrawn its complaint.

Registering players as Asian can be useful to clubs. In the UAE league, as in most leagues in Asia and in the federation’s Champions League, a “3 plus 1” rule is in place. Under the rule, clubs are limited to fielding four foreign players—three from anywhere in the world and one from another AFC member-nation. A highly rated Brazilian striker with an Asian passport could be highly sought-after addition to many rosters.

There has been controversy with national teams, too. Fifa is investigating a complaint filed Fc Seoul’s Dejan Damjanovic (left) fights for the ball against Dai in October 2015 by the Palestine Football Lin of china’s Shandong Luneng Association. It is alleged that in a 2018 Fc at the recent asian Football World Cup qualifier, East Timor fielded confederation’s champions League seven ineligible Brazilian-born players. quarterfinal at Seoul World cup Wanderley’s case has been handled Stadium in Seoul. AP rapidly. His two goals in the first-leg win in August alerted the media in Indonesia, No. 191 in the world in Fifa’s rankings, with questions asked about him being a possible recruit for the national team.

On August 31 Jakarta’s Justice Ministry said no passport had ever been issued to the player. The AFC, satisfied that the documents are fake, is now focusing its investigation as to which party—player, club or both—is responsible for the deception.

El Jaish’s win in the second leg came with Wanderley watching from the sidelines.

Al Nasr denounced the forfeit decision on social media. Ahead of the second leg in Dubai, the club’s coach Ivan Jovanovic said he could not accept or understand it. AP

Sports

A8

to adhere to international law and refrain from trying to change the status quo. Japan has also provided assistance to the coast guards and navies of Southeast Asian nations and has its own, separate territorial dispute with China.

In the speech at the Washington think tank on her first visit to the US as defense minister, Inada singled out China for its reclamation of land around See “Japan,” A2

Continued on A2

Japan vows to step up engagement in South China Sea against Xi’s will

J

apan’s new defense minister said on Thursday her nation would step up activity in the South China Sea, in comments made less than two weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping urged Japan to “exercise caution” in the waters.

“Japan on its part will increase its engagement in the South China Sea through, for example, Maritime SelfDefense Force joint training cruises

PESO exchange rates n US 47.5710

with the US Navy, bilateral and multilateral exercises with regional navies, as well as providing capacity-building assistance to coastal nations,” Tomomi Inada said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

While not a claimant in the complex web of territorial disputes in the water bisected by vital shipping lanes, Japan has frequently urged all parties

O

RMOC CITY—Traveling from Monumento in Caloocan City to the Mall of Asia in Pasay City in one hour is virtually impossible, except during Good Fridays.

However, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) now has an innovation that can make this a reality.

All it needs is a public-private partnership deal to cover its production and the Department of Transportation’s (DOTr) guarantee that it is safe for commuters.

Dubbed as Hybrid Electric Road Train (HERT), the vehicle runs on diesel fuel and an electric-powered battery. “It is developed by Filipino engineers using locally available parts,” DOST Undersecretary for Research and Development Rowena Cristina L. Guevara told the BusinessMirror.

HERT is one of the technologies discussed at the first DOST Technology Transfer Day held here as part of the 25th Visayas Area Business Conference that ran from September 14 to 16.

Most of the technologies presented were aimed at improving agricultural productivity; industry competitiveness, especially for small and medium industries; countryside development; environment and disaster-risk reduction and management; and quality health care.

Another technology presented that can help improve commuters’ mobility is the Automated Guideway Transit (AGT)

of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., field questions from the media during the opening of the Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Global Service Center for thermal power-plant-operators in Southeast Asia held in Alabang, Muntinlupa City. The center will support the operation and maintenance of thermal plants. See story on B2. NONIE REYES

n japan 0.4660 n UK 62.9792 n HK 6.1319 n CHINA 7.1216 n singapore 34.8966 n australia 35.7448 n EU 53.5031 n SAUDI arabia 12.6856

Source: BSP (16 September 2016 )

A2 Saturday, September 17, 2016

News BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

DTI, DOLE present new option to address ‘endo’ Continued from A1

of Labor and Employment (DOLE), presents a middle-ground solution as opposed to total phasing out of contractualization.

“According to the Labor Code, a service provider is allowed to deploy workers. Our suggestion is to make them regular employees, not contractual. Our proposal is to make them direct-hire, permanent already. Once the contract of a particular worker in a company has expired, the service provider should redeploy that worker to another company,” Lopez said.

T he practice of leg itimate contracting or subcontracting, wherein the principal company farms out to a contractor a specific service or job within a definite period, is now being reviewed by the Dole, as the present administration aims to stamp out its abuse, dubbed as endo.

The so-called endo becomes a distortion of the legitimate contracting or subcontracting scheme when there is a repeated hiring of employees under an employment

contract of short duration or a service agreement of short duration with the same or different contractors. This is done by principal employers to avoid paying more benefits to workers.

The prevailing Dole Department Administrative Order (DAO) covering the practice, the DAO 18-A, Series of 2011, recognizes the workers hired by contractors or subcontractors as contractual employees.

With the proposal, the employee-employer relationship will now be implemented between the contractor (or service-provider) and the employee, with the contractor treating the employee as regular workers.

The contractor will be res-ponsible in giving full benefits to the workers, such as leave credits, retirement, SSS, Philhealth and others.

The principal, however, should have the responsibility to police the service providers, coupled with the DOLE’s tighter accreditation of the service providers.

Higher administrative fee

Employers Confederation of the

Philippines (Ecop) President Donald Dee, in a phone interview, said they are open to the proposal, but this may mean the government may institute a larger fee for companies to pay to contracting, or subcontracting agencies.

Under the DOLE DAO 18-A, Series of 2011, there is a standard administrative fee of at least 10 percent of the total contract.

Dee estimates this can increase to 30 percent, given the increased liability of the subcontractors or contractors over the employees.

The Ecop president also noted that smaller companies may not be able to comply should a heftier fee be imposed and might just resort to direct hiring.

Lopez said President Duterte has been receptive to the idea, and the proposals will now be presented to labor groups to get their feedback.

“President Duterte is open to this system for service providers [contractors or subcontractors], but we have to ensure that the workers rights and benefits are protected,” he added.

Informal sector

But labor expert Rene Ofreneo said the government should not only focus on removing the illegal practice of contractualization of Filipino workers, but should also work to protect and enforce the rights of those in the informal labor sector.

Ofreneo, a professor at the University of the Philippines’s School of Labor and Industrial Relations, said the government should also address the problems besetting the informal-labor sector, such as lack of social-security benefits and security of tenure, resulting in an overall feeling of anxiety over the future of their families.

The latest labor-force survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in July indicated that 43.8 percent of the total Philippine work force are in the informal-labor sector, which is defined as those workers employed in household or unincorporated enterprises owned and operated by ownaccount workers.

“Under the Constitution, all workers have their constitutional

rights to self-organization, collective bargaining and negotiations, security of tenure, humane conditions of work and to a living wage,” Ofreneo told the BusinessMirror.

“So the government should not only be preoccupied with eradicating contractualization for those employees in the formal-labor sector, but also for the millions of Filipinos in the informal sector,” he said.

Under the Labor Code, these workers in the informal-labor sector are excluded from many of the benefits extended to those in the formal-labor sector, such as the minimum labor standards for hours of work and salary rates for work done on weekends, and during legal and special holidays.

This is aside from their right to security of tenure and other social-security benefits.

Labor law provisions, including the implementing rules, deprive these informal laborers of their constitutional rights under Article XIII of the 1987 Constitution. This is because even if these informal laborers are doing

Hybrid trains seen as viable solution to Metro congestion Continued from A1

system, a rapid mass-transit system that is being eyed to ferry thousands of commuters daily from Santa Rosa to Calamba in Laguna.

Two prototypes have already been developed for HERT. One prototype has a capacity of 60 people per coach and can have as much as eight coaches linked together in a single trip. It can traverse the 23-kilometer distance from Monumento Circle to the Mall of Asia (MOA) in one hour, including stops in stations.

The system’s operation is similar to the railway transit. There will

be stations that will be designated where the passenger can ride and alight. One coach will be scheduled to pass in each station every 44 seconds.

Unlike the present Light Rail Transit and Metro Rail Transit system, there is no need to set up additional infrastructure as it will make use of the existing highway. “You have to remove buses in one dedicated lane. It works like the trains, there will be designated stops every kilometer,” Guevara said.

“They are designed to have a good turning point at Bonifacio Circle in Caloocan and at MOA,” she added.

Guevara said the technology has already been presented to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Board. “There is a planned bus rapid transit of the DOTr, and we are hoping it will adopt the road-train technology.

The DOTr is very receptive. They only want to make sure that these are all tested for safety,” she said.

A smaller prototype will be brought to Cebu for testing purposes on how well it will run in their existing road network.

Guevara said some companies have expressed willingness to undertake the operation. Also, there are 13 manufacturers that are ca-

pable of manufacturing and maintaining the coaches. “It solves the problem of maintenance because we have locals that can maintain them.”

“The way we imagine it, it will not be run by a single company.

When you remove the buses from Edsa many bus companies will be affected. What will the bus operators do? So we imagine that they will also operate, will have their drivers, etc.,” Guevara said. “We will only replace the system. No one will lose their job or business and no one will be allowed to be monopolize it.”

As for the AGT technology, the

DOST said it is being planned to ferry commuters from Santa Rosa to Calamba in Laguna. The technology aims to reduce traffic congestion, lessen greenhouse-gas emission and stimulate railway development and create more economic opportunities in urban centers.

A prototype of AGT is currently in Tutuban train station and is ready for transfer to Santa Rosa, where the railway line is longer to achieve top speed for testing in December. The technology is designed to run on a maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour, well above the 60 kilometers per hour maximum speed mandated by the law.

work that are usually necessary and desirable for the business of the employers who employ them on a more or less regular basis, their relationship with their employers are purported to be one where there is no actual employeremployee relationship, but mere contracts for a piece of work executed one after the other.

Ofreneo said it is not enough for the DOLE to repeal DAO 18A, which allows a loophole for contractors to engage in legal contracting of laborers, but an overhaul of the Labor Code to provide equal protection not only between regular and nonregular workers, but also those in the formal- and informal-labor force.

Ofreneo cited the labor-relations situation in India, where even informal laborers are able to bargain collectively with their employers.

“In India they have an organization there composed of informal laborers, and they can bargain with their employer and lobby their government for housing benefits, education benefits and other socialprotection benefits,” he said.

Human rights. . .

Continued from A1

“You do not go to the Philippines and say, ‘I’m going to give you something, I’m going to help you develop and I’m going to help you grow but these are the checklist[s] that you must comply with. We will lecture you on human rights’,” he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Yasay did not comment on testimony on Thursday by a former Filipino militiaman before the Philippine Senate that President Duterte, when he was still a city mayor, ordered him and other members of a liquidation squad to kill criminals and opponents in ganglandstyle assaults that left about 1,000 dead.

Yasay also sought to tamp down US concern about statements from Mr. Duterte in the past week that suggested an intent to scale back in the US-Philippine security alliance.

He said the Philippines is committed to a defense-cooperation agreement signed by the previous government that will give the US access to five Philippine military bases.

And while President Duterte has taken steps to repair relations with China, Yasay also said Manila will only discuss their territorial dispute in the South China Sea with Beijing on the basis of a recent international tribunal ruling, supported by Washington. The tribunal found in Manila’s favor and invalidated the legal basis of China’s expansive claims.

But Yasay confirmed the Philippines does not want to undertake joint patrols with the US beyond its territorial waters in disputed waters near the South China Sea—a step taken by the last government. AP

Japan. . .

Continued from A1

maritime features in the water and expressed support for the US Navy’s freedom of navigation operations there.

“Coercive attempts to change the facts on the ground and upend the prevailing norms do not serve anybody’s interest,” she said. “Unfortunately, what China has been doing recently in the East China Sea and South China Sea is just that, and it is raising serious concern in the Asia Pacific and beyond.”

Earlier this month, Xi met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for the first time in almost a year and a half. During the discussions on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China, Xi said Japan should “exercise caution in its words and deeds” on the South China Sea issue, Xinhua news agency reported.

Inada, who last month became the second woman to be appointed Japan’s defense minister, is known for embracing causes that irritate Japan’s biggest-trading partner.

She is a frequent visitor to Yasukuni Shrine, seen by many in China, as well as South Korea, as a symbol of Japan’s past military aggression in Asia. AP

news@businessmirror.com.ph

briefs OWWA cautions OFWs vs. direct-hiring scheme COTABATO CITY—To ensure work documents are processed properly and in accordance with standards set by their employers, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (OWWAARMM) has urged its overseas work applicants to avoid “direct hiring” schemes and engage only with legitimate recruitment agencies.

Odin Abdula, OWWA-ARMM’s programs and services division chief, said that prospective overseas workers should transact only with licensed agencies duly accredited by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. The advice came about following reports of rampant labor violations committed by employers, mostly in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, in the Middle East.

Abdula said workers hired through legitimate agencies are assured of support, as parallel efforts between foreign agencies or employers overseas and that of the government are done to address concerns of deployed workers. The direct-hiring scheme, however, limits Philippine overseas labor officers to immediately respond to problems of workers due to the absence of a legitimate agency, compounded further by stringent labor laws carried out by the host country.

“We usually remind recruitment agencies based in Manila and foreign agencies or employers overseas of their liability under Republic Act (RA) 8042 as amended by RA 10022, otherwise known as the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995,” Abdula said. PNA

Economy

BusinessMirror Editors: Vittorio V. Vitug and Max V. de Leon • Saturday, September 17, 2016 A3

House panel wraps up deliberations on ₧3.350-T natl budget bill for 2017

T

By Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz

@joveemarie

he head of the House Committee on Appropriations on Friday said he does not foresee any major change in the National Expenditure Program, or the proposed 2017 national budget, submitted by Malacañang to Congress.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman and National Unity Party Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles of the First District of Davao City made a statement after his committee wrapped up its budget hearings for the proposed P3.350-trillion General Appropriations Act. “I’m hoping our colleagues recognize the urgent need to have a solid expenditure program to finance the President’s reform agenda, and allow a smooth and trouble-free approval of the national budget,” Nograles said.

“If all goes according to schedule,

the Duterte administration’s “budget for change” would be presented for plenary debates before end of September, and will be approved in the House of Representatives by midOctober,” he said. The committee, Nograles, said is now conducting preplenary briefings prior to the commencement of plenary deliberation tentatively by September 27.

Nograles said all issues about the proposed budget for every department, including the concerns of some congressmen, which were not addressed by agency representatives during the first round of

appropriations hearings, will be ironed out and tweaked during the pre-plenary conferences.

“What we want is to bring everything on the table to iron out all the problems before we present the budget for plenary deliberations.

This is President Duterte’s maiden budget and I hope that we can really fast-track the process so that we can move on to other pressing legislative matters, such as the proposed constitutional change and the fight against endo [end of contract],” Nograles said.

The Duterte administration’s P3.350-trillion budget for 2017 focuses on social and economic services. Of the P3.35 trillion, 40.14 percent, or P1.34 trillion, will be for empowering human resources through education, health care, social welfare and other social services.

The 27.6 percent, or P923 billion, for economic services to fix broken infrastructure network, boost agriculture and rural sector, and generate more jobs and livelihood. For general public services and defense, the government will allocate 22 percent, or P729 billion, of its total budget.

The 2017 budget is higher by 11.6

51 community fish-landing centers in Western Visayas ILOILO CITY—The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) is hoping to complete the establishment of 51 community fish-landing centers in Western Visayas by the middle of next year. BFAR Regional Director for Western Visayas Remia Aparri said 17 fish-landing centers were funded in 2015 and 34 more have been added on their list of projects this year. The project has a total fund of around P153 million. She disclosed that construction of some of the projects is ongoing, while others are still on the bidding and procurement process.

The community fish-landing center is expected to boost the economic activity in the area where it is situated.

It is built specifically to benefit marginal fishermen.

Three community fish landing centers were already completed and turned over to their host local government units. These are in Ibajay, Aklan; Pan-ay, Capiz and Estancia, Iloilo. The center is built in areas where there is a high incidence of poor fishermen and accessible to target beneficiaries.

The facility can be used as a market place and training hub for value adding and post harvest practices. PNA

Interior and Local Government, with P150 billion; National Defense, with P134 billion; Social Welfare and Development, with P129.9 billion; and Health, with P94 billion; State universities and colleges with P58.8 billion; Transportation, with P55.4 billion; and Agriculture, P45.2 billion; and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, with P41.7 billion.

What we want is to bring everything on the table to iron out all the problems before we present the budget for plenary deliberations. This is President Duterte’s maiden budget, and I hope that we can really fast-track the process so that we can move on to other pressing legislative matters, such as the proposed constitutional change and the fight against endo [end of contract].”—Nograles

Duterte orders DA to aid Basilan coconut farmers amid ‘cocolisap’ onslaught

9-hour power interruption in some partS of C. LUZON CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga— The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) will conduct maintenance activities in some parts of Central Luzon starting on Saturday.

Ernest Vidal, NGCP corporate communications officer, said areas being serviced by Pampanga 1 Electric Cooperative, Inc. (Pelco-1) will experience a nine-hour power interruption, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Pelco-1 distrubutes power supply to the towns of Arayat, Candaba, Magalang, Mexico, San Luis and Santa Ana. “The NGCP will conduct testing of instrument transformers at Pelco IMexico metering point,” Vidal said.

Likewise, some areas in the provinces of Nueva Ecija and Aurora will experience 8 a.m to 5 p.m. power outage on Tuesday.

“This is to facilitate the testing of lightning arrester at San Luis line metering point inside Cabanatuan Substation, and corrective works along Cabanatuan-San Luis transmission line,” he said.

Vidal said the nine-hour power interruption will affect areas being serviced by Neeco II-Area 1, Neeco IIArea 2 and Aurelco. PNA

percent than the current year’s budget of P3.002 trillion. As a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP), the 2017 budget represents 20.4 percent compared with this year’s 20.1 percent of GDP. By department and special purpose allocations, the top 10 are the departments of Education, with P567.7 billion; Public Works and Highways, with P458.6 billion; the

This undated photo shows the devastation of cocolisap infestation in a coconut farm.

By Jasper Arcalas @jearcalas

P

Face masks A young faculty member of a school in Quezon City browses through a collection of face masks. She says the masks demonstrate the versatility of art forms in engaging audiences to question representations. Each mask, while seemingly connected to others in terms of color and shape, is definitely unique. By interacting with them, the audience experiences the dimension of uniqueness of interpreting art. NONIE REYES

Panelo: No abuse of emergency powers to untie Metro gridlock

By David Cagahastian @davecaga

C

hief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo urged Congress on Friday to give President Duterte the emergency powers he requested to solve the traffic problem in Metro Manila, as congressional hearings on pending bills regarding the emergency powers have been suspended.

Panelo assured that Mr. Duterte will not abuse any emergency powers that will be granted to him, citing that he does not even see the need to declare martial law or suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus as suggested by some senators.

“I don’t think [he will abuse it].

We have a different kind of president—a president who is a man of

integrity beyond corruption and who has a political will to walk his talk,” Panelo said.

“Even if we give him emergency powers, he doesn’t abuse. You must remember that he is the only president in the entire political career of all our politicians who has no sense of entitlement. He enforced the law even against himself and his own children,” he added.

At the Senate, Committee on Public Services Chairman Sen. Grace Poe has suspended the hearings on the pending bills proposing to grant emergency powers to Mr. Duterte to solve the traffic problem.

Poe required the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to come up with a detailed list of projects for which the emergency powers will be wielded.

At the House of Representatives,

Committee on Transportation Chairman Cesar Sarmiento had also asked the DOTr to identify and define the traffic crisis, which is proposed to be solved by the grant of emergency powers. But Panelo assured that Mr. Duterte will not abuse any grant of emergency powers, citing that he does not even see any need to ask Congress to give him the power to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus as suggested by Sen. Richard Gordon.

“No, I don’t think so,” Panelo said when asked whether the President is even contemplating on declaring martial law or suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, which would have allowed warrantless arrests against persons suspected of terrorism or drug trafficking.

“Right now it’s not needed because it’s under control,” Panelo added.

resident Duterte has ordered the immediate release of assistance to coconut farmers on Basilan Island devastated by the cocolisap pest, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said.

“During the Cabinet meeting last Wednesday [September 14], I reported to the President what I saw in Basilan during my biyaheng bukid on the island on Tuesday and informed him that 3 million of the estimated 6 million coconut trees were already destroyed by the pests,” Piñol said in his Facebook post on Friday.

“Make sure that you help the people of Basilan right away,” Piñol added, quoting Mr. Duterte.

Piñol said he proposed some “immediate interventions” to aid the affected farmers in Basilan during the Cabinet meeting.

First, Piñol said he ordered the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources to train the Basilan fishermen on how to make boats in order for them to have an alternative livelihood aside from fishing.

“For every fiberglass boat made, the workers are paid P15,000 for the labor. So with the 1,000 units, the locals will earn P15 million,” Piñol said referring to the 1,000 fiberglass fishing boats that would be distributed to the concerned fishermen.

The DA chief said he also committed the construction of three icemaking facilities in three areas of the island province, which would serve as storage for fish catches in the area.

Piñol also said the Department of Agriculture (DA) will distribute rice, corn and vegetables seeds and fertilizers so that the coconut farmers

will have a secondary crop to plant.

The DA will also distribute planting materials for other viable crops in the island, such as coffee, abaca and pineapple, Piñol said.

“While it would take quite a while before the farmers could earn from these products, the introduction of these secondary crops would be in preparation for the cutting down of coconut trees that could no longer be saved and a massive replanting with new coconut varieties,” Piñol said.

“Livestock and poultry breeding materials will also be delivered to the island the soonest to provide the farmers with immediate sources of income,” Piñol said, adding that additional farm implements and equipment will also be turned over to the farmers’ organizations in the island, including farm tractors, cultivators, rice threshers, corn shellers and rice and corn mills.

Under the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (Acef), they will provide children of the affected farmers and fishermen in the island some scholarship slots in Basilan State College. The Acef scholars, who will take agricultureand fisheries-related degrees, will be granted full-tuition subsidy and will also receive a monthly stipend of P1,000 from the DA, Piñol said.

“President Duterte, who was obviously touched by the plight of the people of the island, instructed me to fast-track the implementation of the projects,” Piñol said.

“I promised the President that within two months, the first batch of the fiberglass boats will be ready for use of the fishermen, while the seeds and the equipment will be delivered immediately,” Piñol added.

A4 Saturday, September 17, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

The ultimate traffic solution?

I

T seems like every discussion about the traffic problem in Metro Manila goes through a long checklist of all the things that are wrong and all the solutions that might be employed. There are not enough goodquality highways and most of the side roads are better suited to carabao carts.

The Metro’s public transportation would probably be effective if the population of the National Capital Region was about 5 million instead of 13 million. There is little if any order to the routes and execution of the thousands of public-utility vehicles (PUVs).

There are way too many cars.

But always at the end of the list of problems is driver discipline.

We know that Filipino motorists and those that jockey PUVs around the city have their own idea of the rules of the road. And in our case, rules are meant to be bent and broken.

However, modern technology has finally caught up with the traffic problem in the form of driverless cars, buses and trucks.

Perhaps, leading the pack is Google, better know for its Internet presence. Google is already testing its driverless cars. MercedesBenz, Nissan, Audi and, especially, Tesla are in the game.

The latest entry is Uber, which set up an Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a year and a half ago. The world’s first self-driving Ubers are now on the road as of last week.

All of these examples are, of course, just in the testing stage and there have been some bad accidents. It will be some time before these cars are truly driverless but, as with all technologies, it will come. It is only a matter of time before the bugs are worked out.

Remember that these cars run with the use of highly sophisticated computer technology that includes special sensors, “thought” processors and advanced mechanical devices. The idea is that these vehicles can observe potential problems in the making and react better and quicker to find a safe solution. Certainly, part of the advanced technology is that driverless cars will never be texting, eating, or listening to music.

However, as much as we would like to believe that this may be the wave of the future, good luck. While we know that computers have come a long way in the last decades, does Elton Musk at Tesla really have any idea what he is getting into trying to push driverless cars in Metro Manila? He has a better chance landing a man on Mars with his Space-X rockets when they don’t explode.

What is the computer solution to dealing with the driver (or drivers) who suddenly decide that airport road should be a oneway street? Is there a computer algorithm that understands that buses on Commonwealth Avenue can stop anywhere to pick up passengers? The first driverless car in Metro Manila will probably be “dead” on Sucat Road, unable to figure out which of the three traffic enforcers in front of SM BF, each giving different directions, should be followed.

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Why the stock market is not important John Mangun

OUTSIDE THE BOX

B

elieve it or not, there are dozens of things that are more important economically than the Philippine stock market. But before looking at the stock market, what are the important economic issues?

Interest rates are more important than what happens to stock prices.

Interest rates are the cost of money in the same way that for Filipinos the cost of fish, chicken and pork is the “cost of food”. On January 1 the benchmark overnight borrowing rate was 4 percent. It is now 3 percent, or 25 percent lower. But the screaming headlines are about stock-market prices, not lower interest rates and cost of money or the price of chicken.

That all might be true, but didn’t the 1929 stock-market crash cause the Great Depression? To say the stock-market crash caused the Great Depression is like saying your dead liver caused your decades-long abuse of alcohol. The stock-market crash

was one of the symptoms of the conditions—deflation of commodity prices, disruption of global trade, dramatic drop in credit demand and too much unhealthy bank debt— that created the economic situation of the depression.

Yes, but in 2001 the US stock market crashed in what is known as the “dot-com bubble”. True, and a perfect example of what happens when dumb people with companies based on absurdly bad business models meet dumber people with too much cash. That’s why it is called a bubble. There were two other companies that were started during the dot-com bubble era—Amazon.com and eBay. More people do not have a clue

More people do not have a clue what the stock market is all about. Initially, it is a fantastic platform for companies to raise money to expand and improve their business. But that has absolutely nothing to do with dayto-day stock-price fluctuations.

Investors want to own listed companies in the belief—rightly or wrongly—that future stock price will reflect future corporate value. Further, they hope— again rightly or wrongly—to receive a share of the profits through dividends.

what the stock market is all about.

Initially, it is a fantastic platform for companies to raise money to expand and improve their business. But that has absolutely nothing to do with day-to-day stock price fluctuations. Investors want to own listed companies in the belief—rightly or wrongly—that future stock price will reflect future corporate value. Further, they hope—again rightly or wrongly— to receive a share of the profits through dividends.

That is all wonderful, but this is

China’s housing gets scarily expensive

F

By Christopher Balding | BloombergView

or many years, China’s authorities took a Goldilocks approach to housing prices: They wanted a market that was neither too hot nor too cold, and took measures as needed to control prices. Although an explicit asset-price target was never announced, it was widely assumed that the government wanted home prices to grow in line with the rate of economic growth.

To accomplish this, technocrats in Beijing deployed a combination of monetary stimulus and regulatory measures. When prices overheated, they put the brakes on credit growth, required higher down payments for mortgages and placed administrative restrictions on who could buy in which cities. When prices started to drop, they tried loosening credit and boosting the number of units people could own.

But in the past few years, with economic growth sluggish, the planners became much more tolerant of rising prices, even as signs of a bubble emerged. Official data show the price-to income-ratio hitting 9.2 at the end of 2015; housing prices have continued to rise significantly since.

All this has led to some widespread distortions.

China’s homeowners have come to see near double-digit real-estate returns as a birthright, a bet on par with death and taxes. According to

one study, more than 70 percent of Chinese household wealth is in housing. Investors believe there’s an implicit guarantee that the government won’t let home prices drop, even as many buildings sit empty.

Meanwhile, banks have gone on a lending spree: Total outstanding mortgage loans rose more than 30 percent and new mortgage growth clocked in at 111 percent in the past year. Since June 2012, outstanding mortgage loans have grown at an annualized rate of 30 percent. Predictably, that’s pushed prices higher and higher.

In urban China, the average price per square foot of a home has risen to $171, compared to $132 in the US. In first-tier cities, such as Beijing and Shenzhen, prices have increased by about 25 percent in the past year.

A 100-city index, compiled by SouFun Holdings Ltd., surged by a worrisome 14 percent in the last year.

Developers are buying up land in

China’s homeowners have come to see near double-digit realestate returns as a birthright, a bet on par with death and taxes.

According to one study, more than 70 percent of Chinese household wealth is in housing. Investors believe there’s an implicit guarantee that the government won’t let home prices drop, even as many buildings sit empty. some prime areas that would need to sell for $15,000 per square meter just to break even.

When the government has halfheartedly tried to apply the brakes, efforts to game the system have only intensified. Shanghai recently had to put down rumors that it was planning to tighten ownership restrictions for married couples, after city offices were crammed with couples seeking a “divorce” so they could continue buying property. An entire industry has evolved to help people prove they have the required amount of financial assets needed to obtain a mortgage.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) surely doesn’t want people to think of housing as a one-way bet. Ma Jun, the chief economist

about stock-price movement and the vast majority of people do not have a clue why stock prices move.

Stock prices are moved by people that do not build anything, create anything, or do anything more than move money around the table.

And that is wonderful also. Stock prices go higher because people buy shares in the belief that the price will go higher. Because they buy, the price does go up, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think a stock will go up so I buy, and then when asked, I tell everyone else I bought because I think the price is going higher. Then they buy also and the price goes higher. The sell side works the same way. The reason I think the price will move is completely unimportant. What do I know? My objective is only to get others to buy.

Based on this model of why stock prices move, do you think that the stock market is at all important to look at in the bigger picture? We all do this for the profit, which is really the only purpose of the game.

E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.

of the PBOC’s research bureau, was recently quite explicit in warning of a bubble. But right now, no one believes that prices will be allowed to fall significantly.

The first step, as with any addiction, is for Chinese leaders to admit there’s a problem and formally move away from the implicit asset-price growth target. Just as the government has embraced a so-called new normal of lower economic growth, it should recognize a new normal in housing prices that doesn’t force tightening or loosening measures every few months to hit an unsustainable growth target.

Leaders have to accept that allowing asset prices to fall can sometimes be healthy, and attempting to prop them up can often be counterproductive. A burst bubble would be a disaster: Bailing out the real-estate market would dwarf the few hundred billion dollars used to prop up the stock market in 2015.

In consistently allowing home prices to rise so dramatically, the PBOC is significantly increasing risks of just such a brutal correction. Though it may be difficult for investors to profit from slower growth in real-estate prices, that’s far preferable to the alternative. Asset-price targeting in China has run its course.

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

$5 billion in revenues, 210,000 jobs in health care

Archdiocese of Manila celebrates the Jubilee of the Laity Rev. Fr. Antonio Cecilio T. Pascual

Jemain Tinio Diaz de Rivera

Forward Moving

G

lobal health-care information technology and business-process management (IT-BPM) market is expected to grow from $170.47 billion revenues in 2016 to $276.79 billion in 2021. This was revealed by Beng Coronel, president of the Health care Information Management Association of the Philippines (Himpa) during the industry’s annual Health care Information and Management Systems (HIMS) Conference held at Makati Shangri-La. From the global health-care ITBPM market, the Philippines will corner about $5 billion in revenues by 2022, which will translate to 210,000 direct employments, said Beng, who is also president of Pointwest Technologies Corp.

Market drivers—like transformation to value-based outcomes, consolidation among and between payers and providers, telemedicine, consumerization and technological advances, like robotics process automation, digital transformation and new delivery and billing models— will contribute to the forecasted growth for the local HIMS industry.

The conference’s theme “Global Convergence Enabling Inclusive Care and Innovation” aims to discuss key success factors to ensure that the Philippines remains competitive as a destination of choice by global companies. This was reiterated by Jeff Williams, chairman of Himap and GIC Enablement Operations head of DTSI. Secretary Rodolfo A. Salalima of Department of Information and Communications Tecnology (DICT) was represented by Commissioner Monchito B. Ibrahim who expressed support for the sector’s aim to identify key factors and programs that will contribute to the positioning of the Philippines as the leading destination for quality HIMS. DICT recognized the contribution of the healthcare IT-BPM industry that has achieved an estimate $1.3 billion in annual revenues.

Myla Reyes, Himap board of trustee and conference committee chair, and concurrent vice president for health-care operations of SPi Global, successfully organized and managed the seventh HIMS Conference, bringing together over 40 international and local VIP guests to speak on three very important focus point to over 300 delegates.

Speakers include Karthik Rajan, principal consultant of Frost & Sullivan; Dan Schwebach, VP of AAPC; Nora K. Terrado, undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industry; Roger Salazar, president and Country Lead of UHG; and Kit Sumabat, CEO of HealthInformatics Inc. The conference expanded to

include breakout sessions in different tracks for business, technology and talent executives and a new framework will be provided to participants with a breadth and depth of knowledge on topics with principles drawn from different disciplines.

Delegates were impressed with the three focus tracks: Innovate track, highlighting on the millennial health-care professionals and how the Philippine educational system is keeping up with the industry needs; robotic process automation (RPA) and if it is a threat or opportunity; and health IT innovations in our own backyard.

Transform track covered emerging service and business models in the HIM-BPM sector, the rise of health call centers and if the country was ready, and the age of health-care consumerism.

Care track deliberated on how telehealth is changing the game in patient care, data analytics and its uses in healthcare population management, and electronic claims processing in the Philippines.

Global health-care-BPM executives, industry experts and professionals attended the whole-day event that was copresented by Globe Telecom; Eastern Telecoms; NICE Systems Ltd.; Shearwater Health; Pointwest Technologies; TeleDevelopment Services Inc.; United Health Group; SPi Global; AAPC; and Oxford Research Group.

HIMS is now trending and providing career opportunities to thousands of Filipinos, including unemployed or underemployed registered nurses. Industry leaders and investors highlighted the profound global changes seen and experienced that affect day-to-day living.

The absence of medical practitioners has been a reason for deprivation of basic health care. Presently, we see various modes of providing care and using technology as an enabler.

Information plays a vital role in ensuring proper provision of care, and Himap takes seriously their role in equipping both health-care providers and payors with the accurate and timely information needed to deliver appropriate results.

The Philippines sees another rising star in the HIMS sector, an important part of the IT-BPM industry.

Welcoming the next 10,000 Syrian refugees

A

fter a late-summer surge, the Obama administration has met its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016. The Republican House Freedom Caucus considers that 10,000 is too many, preferring to stop resettling Syrians until the administration can“assure no terrorists or individuals with radical sympathies or views will be admitted.”

Such fears are largely misplaced. Few, if any, classes of travelers to the US face greater scrutiny. Nevertheless, the process for admitting refugees from Syria can be tightened. And at least as important, the process of integrating them into American life can be improved.

To see how, it’s worth revisiting who these newcomers are and how they have made it here. Three-quarters have come via the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which selected them from among the most vulnerable people languishing in refugee camps.

Indeed, four-fifths of this year’s arrivals have been women and children; nearly

half are under 18. That said, the possibility remains that some of the rest might be Islamic State recruits, such as those who have blended into the refugee masses flowing toward Europe.

But consider the months-long gauntlet they would have had to run—including face-to-face interviews with officers from the Department of Homeland Security, medical exams, screening through intelligence databases and case referrals back in Washington. A terrorist leader looking to infiltrate operatives into the US could no doubt find easier ways.

No screening process is foolproof, of course—especially, as FBI Director James Comey has pointed out, when you’re dealing with people fleeing a war zone. Homeland Security needs more Arabic speakers to conduct interviews, and once refugees have arrived in the US, law enforcement and intelligence agencies could look harder for signs of radicalization and other trouble.

Bloomberg View

Saturday, September 17, 2016 A5

SERVANT LEADER

A

S part of the continuing celebration of the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy by the Archdiocese of Manila, the Jubilee of the Laity is being held today, September 17, from 8 a.m. to 12 noon at the Lay Formation Center, San Carlos Pastoral Formation Complex in Makati City.

Spearheaded by the Archdiocesan Ministries on Lay Formation, Catechesis, Family and Life, Ecology and Youth, together with the Office for the Promotion of the New Evangelization and with the theme “Hesus: Liwanag ng Awa at Mukha ng Kawang-gawa,” the event hopes to celebrate Jesus as the true light

to all mankind and to keep the light alive and burning, always felt and seen by everyone.

During this event, Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, D.D., will give a talk on the topic “Eucharist that leads to Brotherhood and Social Transformation.”

The Eucharistic Celebration will

be presided by Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, D.D. The month of September is a special month for the laity. It is the month when the Feast of San Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila, the first Filipino saint and the patron of the laity, is celebrated. It is also the month of the catechists and it is within this month that the National Laity Week is celebrated.

The Jubilee of the Laity is rooted in the common calling of God to the different ministries to be a bearer of light, Jesus as the true light to all mankind. The call to the laity is a call to holiness, a holy calling that perseveres to transform the world and make possible the reign of God. The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, the 27th holy year in history announced by His Holiness Pope Francis, is a Roman Catholic period of grace, peace, conversion and joy held

from December 8, 2015, to November 20, 2016. It is a time for remission of sins and universal pardon focusing particularly on God’s forgiveness and mercy.

Since the beginning of the Year of Mercy, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Manila, through the Office of the Promotion of the New Evangelization, has conducted Sectoral Jubilee Celebrations, such as for those who are ill and for persons with disabilities, migrants, Roman Curia, for good governance and creation Jubilee, among others.

To know more about Caritas Manila, visit www. caritasmanila.org.ph. For your donations, please call our DonorCare lines 563-9311, 564-0205, 0999-7943455, 0905-4285001 and 0929-8343857.

Make it a habit to listen to Radio Veritas 846 in the AM band, or through live streaming at www.veritas846.ph. For comments, e-mail veritas846pr@ gmail.com.

What it takes to lead the United Nations

A

S United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon takes part in his last annual General Assembly meeting, delegates from all countries will be looking to see who might replace him.

The four secret straw polls that the Security Council has already conducted offer few clues. Their results have been leaked, but not to the point of revealing how the five veto-bearing permanent members voted. So the putative front-runner, former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, could, in fact, be out of the running.

It’s much easier to see what kind of person should get the job. For starters, it should be someone who can marshal the international community to confront humankind’s one truly existential challenge: climate change. Getting countries to build on last December’s groundbreaking Paris accord is the most essential task he or she will face.

What’s more, the next UN leader should be capable of pushing hard for institutional reforms. It is essential, for one thing, to see that peacekeeping operations protect people, rather than prey on them—or serve as a jobs program for ineffectual militaries from poor, repressive nations.

More broadly, the next secretarygeneral should strengthen oversight, shut down ineffectual or overlapping programs, and revisit the UN budget to make sure that all countries pay their fair share. In other words, the UN needs a leader with proven management and political skills and the willingness to confront unpleasant truths.

In this regard, it would help if the

secretary-general served not a renewable five-year term, but a single seven-year stint. That would allow more time to make changes, insulated from political pressures.

More straw polls will be taken be-

fore the final vote next month. Make these transparent, and the ultimate winner may be able to gather more widespread support from the institution he or she begins to lead.

Bloomberg View

The US-Israel ‘Memorandum of Misunderstanding’

By Eli Lake | BloombergView

A

ccording to the governments in Jerusalem and Washington, this was a great week for the US-Israel relationship. The two countries arrived at a “memorandum of understanding” to extend the US subsidy of Israel’s military budget until 2028. President Barack Obama, no fan of Israel’s current leader, declared: “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable.”

It would be pleasant to believe this. It’s not true, though. America’s commitment to Israel’s security is quite shakable. Indeed, Obama has done much of the shaking. That reminder puts the new memorandum into perspective.

For much of Obama’s presidency, he said he would lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran dismantling its nuclear infrastructure. This was a big part of how he dissuaded Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But that’s not the deal the US and other nations struck with Iran.

Obama ended up agreeing to legitimize and legalize Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and to lift limits on production of nuclear fuel after 15 years. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protested Obama’s Iran bargain to Congress, the White House quietly encouraged fellow Democrats to boycott his speech.

After all of this bad blood, in the last months of his administration, Obama has decided to sign an agreement with Israel that guarantees $3.8 billion per year between 2018 and 2028. On paper it seems generous. As Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, said on Wednesday, this is the “single largest pledge of military assistance—to any country —in American history.”

The fine print tells a different story. The key word in Rice’s state-

Netanyahu and Obama: Frenemies. BloombergView

ment is “pledge.” Congress is the body that appropriates the annual aid budget. When Obama is long gone, it will be Congress that doles out the money for Israel to spend on US military equipment. So one aspect of the aid deal should raise eyebrows: terms saying that Israel will stop making its case directly to Congress for military aid.

Morris Amitay, a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, told me he had never before heard of a president asking a sovereign country, as part of an aid package negotiation, not to lobby Congress.

At first Netanyahu didn’t want to give up Israel’s ability to ask Congress for more funding. But he relented. A secret annex to the memorandum signed on Wednesday requires Israel to forgo any funding Congress would want to give it that exceeds what was in the aid agreement that expires in 2018.

It’s unclear how restrictive the lobbying restriction will actually be.

Israel doesn’t lobby Congress much.

Far more pro-Israel lobbying is done

by Aipac, which comprises US citizens. Could an agreement between Israel and the US limit the rights of Americans to petition Congress?

When I put this question to Aipac Spokesman Marshall Wittman he told me: “The agreement, of course, is only between the two governments.

When the two governments reach an agreement on an issue, we give that factor great weight.” For the time being, Aipac says it will lobby Congress to enact the terms of the new 10-year aid agreement signed on Wednesday.

Obama’s 11th-hour aid deal is less than it seems, not only because the White House cannot appropriate and because the lobbying restriction is off target, but also because Obama’s successors may not honor his pledge.

Obama himself discarded an agreement with Israel’s leaders that was made by George W. Bush and supported by Congress, to accept the legitimacy of some settlements in and around Jerusalem. (That agreement was made as part of negotiations to get Israel to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza.)

The White House also got its way on another key issue known as the “off-shore procurement” carve out, whereby Israel is allowed to spend around 26 percent of the US aid on its own defense industry. In the new aid deal, Israel will spend all of the US subsidy on US defense equipment by 2024.

In this sense the US aid to Israel is a subsidy to American defense companies. The US also retains the leverage that comes from subsidizing around 20 percent of a sovereign nation’s defense budget.

Of course, Israel doesn’t even need the money. When the US began giving Israel serious military assistance in the 1960s, the country’s planned economy was minuscule. In the 1970s it faced a very real boycott, backed by wealthy nations like Saudi Arabia (as opposed to an inconsequential boycott backed by US and European college professors). Back then, the Jewish State really needed as much help as it could get.

Today, Israel’s economy is thriving. In the last 10 years, the country’s GDP has nearly doubled to $230 billion. Israel has discovered great deposits of natural gas. Its lawmakers in recent years have discussed starting a sovereign-wealth fund.

Israel is a key partner with the US arms industry.

Defenders of the US aid package to Israel say that the aid to Israel sends a message to its adversaries at a time when many in the Middle East doubt US resolve. If Obama decided to forgo extending the aid package, others in the Middle East would begin to question the strength of the US-Israel alliance.

But the way to show resolve is not through arms sales and defense assistance. It’s through action. In this respect Obama reaps what he sows.

He decided to sit on the sidelines as Syria imploded. He decided to intervene in Libya and then leave the reconstruction to others. He decided to cut a deal with Iran that enriched the state as it was making war on US allies in the region. He decided to exit Iraq and stay relatively silent as its leaders persecuted the country’s Sunni minority. He decided to let Russia set up airbases in Syria to defend a dictator.

The Nation BusinessMirror

A6 Saturday, September 17, 2016 • Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Losing bidder questions DND frigates deal

By Rene Acosta @reneacostaBM

A

LOSING bidder in the procurement of two frigates for the Navy has questioned the alleged modification by the Department of National Defense (DND) of the project’s bid structure, claiming the acquisition was split into two components.

STX Offshore & Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. (STX Korea), one of the six bidders in the supply of the two frigates worth P18 billion under the Armed Forces modernization program, claimed the defense department split the project by separately bidding the two vessels and their weapon systems and the ammunition.

“Splitting the Authorized Budget of Contract [ABC] and the items to be bid out after the first

stage of the bidding and before the second stage is tantamount to changing the terms and conditions of the bid in the middle of the game,” STX Korea said.

It said the acts was “grossly” d isadva nt ageous, aside f rom “committing a ser ious v iolation of the country’s existing procurement laws.”

STX Korea said the company and the other bidders were initially made to believe that the

whole project was P18 billion and this is the reason it joined the bidding.

“It is, thus, unfair for everyone, especially for those who failed to pass the initial stage, to have the terms substantially changed when the bid has already been submitted,” it said.

A not her Korea n compa ny, Hyundai Heavy Industries Inc. (HHI), won the bidding.

STX Korea said the DND’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) released the project’s technical specifications in January this year, but it also removed all references to ammunition.

The BAC also attached a memorandum to the bid document, specifying the need to split the bidding for the vessels and the ammunition, which could be in the form of missiles, ammunition, torpedoes and other forms of armaments.

Angara Abello Conception Regala & Cruz, STX Korea’s legal counsel, argued that the ABC can only be adjusted downward in certain circumstances, “if there is a need to reflect actual market prices or scope of works or

suit actual field conditions of the project.”

It said if the ABC was to be adjusted, the BAC should conduct a rebidding.

“Upon adjustment of ABC, the procuring entity must conduct rebidding with readvertisement or posting. Any succeeding adjustment of the ABC shall be in accordance with these guidelines,” the law firm said.

STX Korea said it believed the BAC “purposely” split the project to make it appear that Hyundai has offered the lowest price, “now at P16 billion for the two vessels alone.”

“One major effect of such modification is that there would be limited number of possible bidders for the ammunition, considering that launchers are usually tailor-fitted for certain kinds of ammunition,” it said.

“Effectively, the one who will manufacture the launchers in the first bid will, more or less, be the most qualified to be the provider of the ammunition in the second bid,” STX Korea added.

STX Korea said Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana has al-

ready signed the contract for the two vessels pegged at P15,744,571,584.

No splitting

RESPONDENT to the allegations, DND Spokesman Arsenio R. Andolong said the department did not split the project, as the separation of the vessels with launchers and the procurement of the missile/ munitions (weapon systems) was a result of the technical discussions with all of the bidders.

“Said eligible bidders suggested to the Navy’s technical working group to acquire missile-munitions through a government-togovernment transaction to facilitate export-import license of these defense items. Hence, upon recommendation of the Navy, the DND-Armed Forces decided to divide the project into two lots: Lot 1 for the platform with launchers and Lot 2 for the missiles-munitions,” Andolong said.

He said the DND did not violate any provisions of the Government Procurement Reform Act in modifying the bidding documents, as the Lot 1 project underwent two bidding stages as required by the procurement law.

“The allegations that the government will be put into a disadvantage is not correct, precisely because the procurement of missiles and torpedoes will be made through a governmentto - gover nment t ra nsac t ion,” he said.

Also, Andolong said the ABC of the project and the deliverables were not changed.

“STX Korea was mistaken in its belief that the project was purposely split. It was made clear to eligible bidders that the budget for the project is P16 billion for the platform and launchers. This was discussed during the prebid conferences.

Further, “it was also included in the revised bidding documents and bid bulletins issued/posted by the BAC,” he said.

“All bidders who participated in the first stage bidding passed the eligibility requirements, as well as initial technical proposals and were declared eligible to bid by the DND-BAC for the frigate project.

Hence, no prospective bidders were unfairly disadvantaged,” Andolong added.

Pineda presses Pampanga mayors, village Youth lawmaker chiefs on action plans against illegal drugs refiles campus

By Ashley Manabat Correspondent

C

ITY OF SAN FERNANDO— The raid on a piggery in Magalang, Pampanga, where an underground methamphetamine hydrochloride laboratory was discovered, prompted Gov. Lilia “Nanay Baby” G. Pineda to spring into action by immediately calling for a province-wide summit on Wednesday, exactly a week after the drug bust.

The summit, dubbed “Updates on the Anti-illegal Drugs Campaign in the Province of Pampanga,” was held at the Kingsborough Convention Center here. Almost all the 505 barangay chairmen in the province were present and most of its mayors, as well as municipal health officers (MHO), municipal social welfare and development officers (MSWDOs); chiefs of police; and city, municipal and barangay licensing officers took part in the meeting.

Board Member Rosve Henson,

who chairs the Sangguniang Panlalawigan Committee on Public Order and Security, made the welcome remarks, noting that it has been 50 days since some 10,200 drug surrenderees were herded at the Bren Z. Guiao Sports Complex here on July 21.

Now, Pineda wants concrete municipal and barangay action plans, as well as regular monitoring of drug surrenderees. She also cautioned municipal and barangay licensing officers to be wary of applicants, especially if they are foreigners.

“Four years ago, I already told licensing officers, mayors and barangay captains…before you give business permits or licenses, especially if they are foreigners who would like to operate piggeries, you need to look and inspect their premises,” she said.

“Do not issue licenses if they refuse to be checked even if they pay you, you should check regularly and randomly to prevent these unscrupulous groups from turn-

Pineda

ing their business into a criminal activity,” she warned.

During the summit, Pineda grieved over the killing of a mother and her son, which happened just hours earlier right in her hometown of Lubao, as she warned barangay captains to be aware of drug users and pushers in their villages.

She said she knew the victims’ family well. They are from a coastal village in Barangay San Jose Gumi. The father of the victim was a former village chief, while

her late mother was a district supervisor of the Department of Education.

The governor also said a friend from Virginia, US, told her that Capampangans abroad are now very wary in coming home because of what happened during the recent town fiesta in Apalit, where a balikbayan was mauled to death by suspected drug addicts.

Pineda said the victim’s wife is in Australia and up to now the assailants are still at large. “But we are looking for them and, in fact, I have put up a reward money of P100,000 per head for any information leading to the arrests of the three suspects,” she declared.

“That is why we are here today.

It is not enough that we lectured the surrenderees that now number more than 11,000,” she said.

“We need to make municipal and barangay action plans. How can we report to President Duterte on what we did with the 11,000 surrenderors. Where’s the followup?” she asked.

PRC gets rescue vehicles from German Red Cross

T

H E G er m a n R e d C ross (GRC) donated some P8.8 million worth of ambulances and rescue equipment to t he Ph i l ippi ne R ed C ross (PRC) during a simple handover rites held recently at the Philippine Red Cross Tower in Mandaluyong City.

PRC Chairman and CEO Richard J. Gordon accepted the donations, which include four ambulances, with medical equipment valued at P7.8 million; and water search and rescue (Wasar) vehicles, composed of rescue boats and life-saving equipment valued at over P1 million, from Emilio Teijeira, GRC head of delegation.

“We are grateful to the German Red Cross for this generous support to the Philippine Red Cross. These ambulances and water search and rescue vehicles and equipment will further strengthen PRC ’s capacity to respond to emergencies, disasters and other multicasualty incidents,” Gordon said.

The donated ambulances will be added to the PRC national headquarters’ fleet of ambulances, while the Wasar vehicles and

equipment will be turned over to Leyte (two plastic boats) and Cebu (one plastic boat) chapters for the continuous Supertyphoon Yolanda recovery operations.

“These rescue equipment will be useful in rescue operations in

response to multidisasters, such as flood, landslide and storm surge, that may hit the country, especially during typhoon seasons,” Gordon said.

Through the years, GRC has assisted the PRC not only through

donat ions of equ ipment a nd vehicles, but also in building houses a nd prov id ing l ivel ihood for the families affected by disasters. With the recent donation, the PRC now has 126 ambulances and 74 rescue boats.

press-freedom bill

By Marvyn N. Benaning Correspondent

P

ARTY-LIST Rep. Sarah Elago of Kabataan has refiled a bill that seeks to repeal Republic Act 7079, also known as the Campus Journalism Act of 1991, and replace it with a law that “genuinely upholds campus press freedom.” “ T he st udent publ ic ation is the tangible expression of campus press freedom. Through it, students are able to practice their rights to f re e dom of e x pres sion and information, rights that are protected by the 1987 Constitution. We are refiling the campus press-freedom bill in the light of the intensifying attacks against our campus publications in recent months,” Elago said.

She cited data from the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) that recorded more than 800 cases of campus press-freedom violations from 2010 to 2015.

Of those cases, a total of 322 were related to school administrations’ prevention or denial of the use of funds by campus newspapers, while the rest involved censorship, administrative intervention and harassment.

The latest case involves the Philippine Collegian, the student publication of the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP Diliman), which was not able to print its first issue for academic year 2016-2017, owing to the insistence of the UP administration to abide by a difficult procurement process.

St udent publ ic at ion s at the Poly technic Universit y of the Philippines (PUP) are also currently facing problems, with the PUP administration seeking to establish a “centralized university-wide publication.”

The publication fee per student for The Catalyst, the official PUP student publication, is planned to be cut to only P20 from the current P40.

“The flaws of Campus Journalism Act are being exploited

by school administrations to suppress the campus press.

T hey commit offense after offense but suffer no penalty since there is no penalty clause in the current law,” Elago said.

“These violations happen under the guise of unnecessarily tedious bureaucratic processes, which, upon closer scrutiny, are exposed as schemes aimed at silencing student publications printing incisive stories and articles that promote the struggle of the studentry,” the legislator explained.

In the case of the Philippine Collegian, the publication has recently published in-depth and investigative reports critical of the UP’s commercialization and privatization policies, such as the privatized student housing scheme, the Socialized Tuition System (STS) and the e-UP project.

“Such articles have been instrumental in intensifying the campaign against antistudent policies, spurring mass actions not just in UP Diliman but in other UP units, as well,” Elago noted.

Important provisions of the refilled campus press-freedom bill include the compulsory establishment or reestablishment of student publications at all school levels, autonomy of the paper’s editorial board from any form of administrative intervention with regard to the handling of funds, content of articles the editorial board chooses to publish and the selection of publication staff and members.

Section 7 of the campus press-freedom bill also states that “ funding for the stude nt pu bl ic at ion sh a l l b e sourced primarily from student-publication fees collected by the school administration. It shall be mandatory for the school administration to collect student-publication/ subscription fees during the enrollment period.”

House Bill 1493 was first filed in the 15th Congress by then-Party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino of Kabataan.

Sports BusinessMirror

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph | sports@businessmirror.com.ph

Eala, Guarde defeat rivals in qualifier

Saturday, September 17, 2016 A7

YOUNG Micah Shin shows up his veteran rivals to surge four shots up front.

SPORTS PLUS

Archery tilt goes to Dumaguete

A

LEX EALA and Carlyn Guarde won in contrasting fashions to set the pace in the first Cebuana Lhuillier Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Future Stars Qualifiers at the Valle Verde Country Club in Pasig City on Friday.

Eala, one of the country’s fast-rising stars, dominated Bliss Bayking, 6-0, 6-1, in the 14-under division, while Guarde survived Aubrey Calma, 6-3, 7-6, in a tiebreak thriller in the 16-under category of the three-day event, which will select the Philippines’s representatives to the WTA Future Stars tournament in Singapore next month.

In the other completed tie in the 14-under side, Sydney Enriquez held off Kiana de Asis, 6-3, 7-6, in another tiebreak in the event that drew the country’s top junior players. The first exclusive WTA Future Stars qualifiers is sanctioned by the Philippine Tennis Association (Philta), with the winners in the two-division event clinching berths in the Singapore meet where they will be pitted against the region’s leading juniors.

“We’ve been sending representatives to the WTA tournament for years, but this is the first time that we’re actually having an exclusive prequalifier competition here since we want to send no less than the best players in the country,” Philta Chairman and Cebuana Lhuillier President and CEO Jean Henri Lhuillier said.

SHIN SURGES AHEAD

M

ICAH SHIN showed up veteran rivals Jay Bayron and Rey Bayron with a near-flawless game that produced a tournamentbest seven-under 65, putting the young Korean-American four shots clear off erstwhile leader Tony Lascuña after three

overnight one-shot lead. He then held sway at the back to string a 31-34 card for a four-shot cushion at 12-under 204 heading to the final round of the P2.5-million event sponsored by the International Container Terminal Services Inc. “I played well. Everything’s in place, especially my putting,” said Shin, who sparked his birdie spree with a 19-footer on the par-3 second and went on to gun down seven more against a missed-green bogey on the par-5 12th.

The 19-year-old ace has put in strong starts in recent legs of the circuit, organized by Pilipinas Golf Tournaments Inc., only to crumble at the finish, keeping him winless until he put together one near-perfect round under preferred lies rule to get a clear shot at a first-ever championship.

“I have to maintain this kind of game in the final round,” said Shin, who tied for fourth at Splendido Classic where he slugged it out and lost to Lascuña in the final round. He also shared third place at the Riviera Classic won by Bayron in a playoff with Clyde Mondilla and tied for ninth at Aboitiz Invitational, also ruled by Bayron.

Lascuña didn’t fare bad either, besting flightmates Ferdie Aunzo and Dutch Guido van der Valk with a second straight 70 but his “drive for five” hit a snag in the face of Shin’s fiery round as the four-leg winner and Order of Merit

rounds of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Open in Tarlac on Friday.

The Davao-based shotmaker, whose lean frame belies his power off the tee, rattled off eight birdies in second-to-last flight in another fine day at the Luisita Golf and Country Club, including four straight from No. 2, where he quickly erased Lascuña’s

RUN FOR A CAUSE

More than a hundred employees of Smart Communications see action in the recent Nokia Run for a Cause 2016 at the University of the Philippines Diliman grounds. Because of Smart’s strong support for the event, organizers gave the company the Biggest Delegation Award. Registration fees for the activity would benefit Acay Missions Philippines and Bahay Aruga Foundation. The Smart runners are members of the Samahang Mananakbo ng Smart, one of 22 clubs in the company that encourage the work force to live a well-rounded life.

EAGLES VS FALCONS

A

TENEO de Manila shoots for its third win against Adamson University while University of Santo Tomas (UST) and University of the Philippines (UP) try to bounce back from terrible losses in Season 79 University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) men’s basketball action on Saturday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

The Blue Eagles (2-1) face the Soaring Falcons in the main game at 4 p.m., right after the Growling Tigers (1-2) and the Fighting Maroons (0-2) clash at 2 p.m.

Ateneo is coming off a big 76-71 win over defending champion Far Eastern University (FEU) but Head Coach Sandy Arespacochaga warned his wards not to be carried away with that victory as they are facing a dangerous opponent.

“We have a 2-1 record. We’re happy but we can’t celebrate too long. It will be a tough game against Adamson and Coach Franz [Pumaren],” Arespacochaga said.

Thirdy Ravena, John Wong and Jolo Mendoza provided the offense for Ateneo as Aaron Black left the game early after injuring his left foot. Black is doubtful for Saturday’s game.

The Soaring Falcons absorbed their first loss from the Tamaraws, 65-75, but will be entering the game fresher.

After scoring a 104-85 win over UP, Adamson struggled with its offense versus FEU, as Jerrick Ahinmisi and Robbie Manalang, who combined for 44 points against the Fighting Maroons, were

held down to a combined 27 points on seven-of-19 shooting from the field.

Pumaren is confident his wards would bounce back in their next game.

UST Head Coach Boy Sablan, meanwhile, hopes that his wounded Tigers could recover from their horrible 62-100 loss to league-leader De La Salle as they face the winless UP. Sablan admitted fatigue took the toll on them, resulting to 40 turnovers as the Green Archers were relentless with their trapping defense against the season’s hosts.

“We have to play as a team.

Besides, we’re three games into the season, it’s still too early,” Sablan said.

But UST lost a key player after that match after Mario

leader dropped to second at 208.

“My game is quite okay but I could’ve scored better if not for my missed putts, including four that lipped out,” said Lascuña, who hit just three birdies against a bogey on the seventh. “I need to attack tomorrow [today] and shoot a seven-under to win.”

Mondilla, meanwhile, worked his way up to clinch a spot in today’s championship flight, carding a 68 and putting himself in contention for a fourth-leg win with a 209, while Marvin Dumandan also struck back with a 68 for a 210.

Cassius Casas also bounced back from a pair of 72s with a five-under 67 and Elmer Salvador atoned for his second-round 77 with a 66 as they tied Bayron, who made a 71, at 211, seven strokes off the pace.

But focus will be on Shin, who birdied No. 8 to go five-under against Lascuña’s 35 to wrest contol. He sustained his charge at the back with birdies on Nos. 11, 14 and 15 inside 6 feet against a bogey on No. 12 of the par-72 layout hosting an ICTSI-sponsored leg for the second time after the Luisita Championship won by Lascuña in April.

“We’re happy to host two tournaments every year in partnership with ICTSI, PGTI and Central Azucarera de Tarlac,”said Jeric Hechanova, general manager of the club listed as one of the best 100 golf courses outside of the US by Golf Digest. “It’s a rare opportunity to get the pros play together in a tournament like this.”

He added that the club has provided the players free air-conditioned quarters for their comfort plus free meals, making them feel at home.

Best Center basketball clinics up

T

HE Basketball Efficiency and Scientific Training (Best) Center, the award-winning school for basketball and volleyball, will have another series of clinics for aspiring players at the Ateneo College Covered Courts and Starmall Alabang.

The classes at the Ateneo College Covered Court will be held every Saturday on September 24, October 1, 8, 15 and 22 and November 5; and Sunday on November 6 from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Students in Preparatory Level and Levels 1 to 5 will be joining the basketball clinic, while volleyball will be for levels 1 and 2.

Clinics at Starmall Alabang will be held every Sunday on September 18 and 25 and October 2, 9, 16 and 23, from 1 to 4

KIDS get to learn the fundamentals of volleyball at an early age.

Bonleon broke a bone in his left hand in their game against the Green Archers.

De La Salle also handed the Fighting Maroons an 89-71 loss, forcing the wards of Head Coach Bo Perasol to share the bottom with University of the East. Joel Orellana

p.m. Joining these classes are students belonging to the Preparatory Level and Levels 1 to 4.

“Sports is vital in the children’s growth and development. Aside from honing their athletic skills and encouraging kids to lead a healthy, active lifestyle, it also helps them learn self-discipline, teamwork, sportsmanship and perseverance,” Best Center founder Nic Jorge said.

The clinics provide scientific training for young boys and girls of varying skills and age levels, which includes the fundamentals on ball handling, dribbling, passing, shooting, spiking, serving, blocking, footwork, and defensive and offensive moves.

For more information about BEST Center’s classes and tournaments, e-mail bestcentersports@ gmail.com or follow its official Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/BEST-CenterSports-Inc/66172039922.

Ateneo unbeaten in kids’ hoopfest

A

TENEO remained unbeaten in the Small Basketeers Philippines (SBP), while Adamson University dealt San Beda College-Rizal its first loss while remaining unscathed in the Passerelle Division of the Basketball Efficiency Scientific Training (Best) Center’s twin tournaments for kids held recently at the Xavier School Gym. Ateneo crushed San Sebastian College (2-3), 64-34, and beat Xavier A, (4-1), 48-42, to march to its fifth straight win in the seven-team Group B of the SBP tournament backed by Milo and supported

by Chris Sports.

Lourdes School (3-2) smothered Saint Mary’s School (0-6), 62-18, and Marist (3-2)

clobbered San Sebastian College (2-3), 66-40, in the other Group B games. In Group A, Claret (1-4) notched its first win at the expense of winless Notre Dame (0-5), 45-31, while La Salle-Zobel (3-2) zapped Xavier-B (2-3), 51-23.

Adamson University claimed its fourth straight win after beating San Beda-Rizal (4-1) to lead Group B in the Passerelle division.

La Salle Greenhills-B (2-3) clipped Notre Dame (1-5), 54-48, while Nazareth School of National university (4-1) quashed San Sebastian College (1-3), 75-57, also in Group B. In Group A, Saint Augustine School downed Claret (1-4) on Saturday, and returned with a big 91-12 rout of Quezon City Academy (0-5) to improve to 4-2.

Action-filled Gatorade Run set in November

A

MORE action-filled Gatorade Run is expected on November 27 at the SM Mall of Asia grounds in Pasay City.

This was promised by Pepsico Marketing Manager for Hydration Tony Atayde and race director Rio de la Cruz during the event’s media launch on Thursday night at the F1 Hotel at the Bonifacio Global City.

“Last year was a very successful event where more than 6,000 runners attended. This year, we are targeting 8,000 runners,” de la Cruz said. The event will have the 11-kilometer and 22-km distances and Atayde stressed Gatorade’s focus is on the importance of hydration.

“We are giving the runners prerun hydration drinks and dynamic warm-up, as well as postrun hydration tests to know instantly the status of the runners,” Atayde said.

“There will also be free consultation from the experts. Gatorade is a global leader in sports performance and we’ll definitely bring that expertise to the run,” Atayde added.

“Learning the benefits of proper hydration is crucial for runners and we look forward to reinforcing that message through the Gatorade Run.” Adidas will again provide the race kits and finishers’ shirts. Finishers in the

22-km race will receive medals.

Gatorade ambassadors Jeron Teng, Alyssa Valdez, Jaja Santiago and other local endorsers are expected to grace in the event.

Runners coul register at selected adidas outlets starting on October 19. Online registration already started on Monday at runrio.com. Registration ends on Novemeber 23. Lance Agcaoili PEPSICO Marketing Manager Tony Atayde »expounds on the Gatorade Run. Stephanie Tumampos

THE second leg of the Philippine Archery Cup gets going from September 23 to 25 at the Negros Oriental field in Dumaguete City. Some 160 archers from different provinces are expected to see action and vie for slots to the national finals in January. A participant should win in two of three legs to make the nationals.

The Mindanao leg was held in July, while the Luzon edition unfolds in Baguio City next month. “It’s the first time in Philippine archery history that we will conduct this kind of tournament,” World Archery Philippines Secretary-General Rosendo Sombria said.

Cebu’s top prospect Vincent Villa topped the junior recurve and Dondon Sombrio won the men’s masters trophy in the Mindanao leg.

Residents battle Sabah in Laguna

THE 2016 Philippine Residents XV takes on Sabay Rugby in an international 15s match on Sunday at the Southern Plains Field Laguna in Calamba.

The Residents are players from the Alabang Eagles, Manila Nomads, Clark Jets, CBRE Makati Mavericks and Makati Chiefs. The match is set at 3 p.m.

The program provides a pathway for the best local rugby players to learn from an experienced coaching staff and play a high standard of rugby.

The team will be coached by David Johnston, the assistant coach of the men’s national 15s known as the Philippine Volcanoes.

Experienced Volcanoes Justin Villazor Coveney, Jake Robrigado Letts, Jovan Reyes Masalunga and seven other national team members were tapped to reinforce the team that also included Greg Goleman, Jackson Vatu and Epineri Vulakouvaki.

“On paper, this team is surprisingly very strong, getting together the best players from all the top clubs in the country makes this program really exciting,” Matt Cullen, director of Rugby for the Philippine Rugby Football Union, said.

Aribado prevails in squash meet

LONE Filipino bet Myca Aribado beat hometown bet He Xinru, 11-4, 11-3, 11-6 (3-0), and arranged a quarterfinal showdown with second-seeded Australian Sarah Cardwell in the China Squash Challenge Cup 2016 in Beijing on Thursday.

The 22-year-old Aribado practically cruised past her unseeded Chinese opponent in the $10,000 competition that lured the top 16 squash players in Asia.

World No. 51 Cardwell also advanced following an 11-4, 11-4, 11-3 (3-0) win over China’s Duan Siyu.

As a new member of the Professional Squash Association, Aribado was ranked 220th in the world because all her previous victories did not count before her induction to the federation.

The other quarterfinal matchup pits Chinese Li Dongjin and sixth-seeded Malaysian Teh Min Jie, who Aribado outclassed in the finals of the Mempora Kijona Cup in Jakarta in June.

After the tournament, Aribado will compete in the Malaysian Squash Tour in October. Philippine Squash Academy President Robert Bachmann hopes that Aribado would barge into the world’s top 50 before the year ends.

Sports BusinessMirror

SO WHAT? G

By Graham Dunbar

Petra Kvitova, Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Robert Harting—all Rio de Janeiro Olympians last month—reacted with sarcasm and shrugs to the leak from the World AntiDoping Agency database.

CHRIS FROOME: There’s nothing new here. AP

The Associated Press

ENEVA—A two-time Wimbledon singles champion, two Tour de France winners and an Olympic discus gold medalist had the same answer on Thursday to the latest leak by hackers of confidential medical information: So what?

Petra Kvitova, Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Robert Harting—all Rio de Janeiro Olympians last month—reacted with sarcasm and shrugs to the leak from the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) database.

The four athletes said their use of approved medications was already widely reported or they welcomed the openness resulting from an alleged Russian-led cyber attack that Wada believes is revenge for investigations into a state-backed doping program in Russia.

“To say that Petra Kvitova suffers from asthma and uses medication for treatment is the same revelation as saying she’s won Wimbledon,” a spokesman for the Czech tennis player, Karel Tejkal, said.

German discus thrower Robert Harting, the 2012 Olympic champion, wrote on Twitter that “We don’t hide anything. Go transparency!”

“I’ve openly discussed my TUEs [Therapeutic Use Exemptions] with the media and have no issues with the leak, which confirms my statements,” three-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome said.

Kvitova, Harting and Froome were headline names among 25 athletes from eight countries—including 10 from the United States—whose confidential details of using authorized medications spilled into the public domain late Wednesday.

All three competed at the Rio Olympics, where Kvitova and Froome won bronze medals.

Also leaked was detail of asthma medication used by Wiggins, another British winner of the Tour de France and winner of a fifth career Olympic gold in Rio. “There’s nothing new here,” a statement issued on behalf of Wiggins said. “Everyone knows Brad suffers from asthma; his medical treatment is BC [British Cycling] and UCI

A8 | S

aturday, September 17, 2016 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao Asst. Editor: Joel Orellana

[International Cycling Union] approved.”

Wada confirmed a second round of leaked data posted online, after medical records of gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles and seven-time Grand Slam champion Venus Williams were among four American female Olympians whose data was revealed on Tuesday.

All 29 cases revealed records of Therapeutic Use Exemptions, which allow athletes to use otherwise-banned substances because of a verified medical need. There is no suggestion any of the athletes broke any rules.

The substances identified in the leaks are typically anti-inflammatory medications and treatments for asthma and allergies.

Froome’s use of strong anti-inflammatory medication, approved by the UCI for the 2014 Tour de Romandie race in Switzerland, was widely reported two years ago.

“In nine years as a professional, I’ve twice required a TUE for exacerbated asthma, the last time was in 2014,” said Froome, who won his third Tour de France title in July. He took a bronze medal in the time trial at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics last month.

The latest round of leaks identified 10 American athletes, five from Germany, five from Britain, and one each from Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Romania and Russia.

“I am furious that the hacking group is using such insolent and illegal methods,” said Michael Ask, head of Anti-Doping Denmark.

Danish swimmer Pernille Blume, who won gold in Rio de Janeiro in the 50-meter freestyle, had “done nothing wrong,” Ask told Denmark TV2 channel. “She has followed the rules and gotten permission to use the asthma medication which she uses—like many other athletes.”

Harting was revealed to have permission to use medications during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he finished fourth.

The statement on behalf of Wiggins said the leak was “an attempt to undermine the credibility of Wada and that’s something for them to deal with.”

Wada said on Wednesday the Russian hacking group, known as Fancy Bears, had illegally gained access to its Anti-Doping Administration and Management System, or “ADAMS,” and said it included confidential

medical data.

“To those athletes that have been impacted, we regret that criminals have attempted to smear your reputations in this way; and, assure you that we are receiving intelligence and advice from the highest level law enforcement and IT [informationtechnology] security agencies that we are putting into action,” Wada Director General Olivier Niggli said in a statement.

Niggli said Wada had “no doubt that these ongoing attacks are being carried out in retaliation against the agency and the global antidoping system,” because of independent investigations that exposed state-sponsored doping in Russia.

Russian officials have dismissed the claims as ridiculous.

“How can you prove that the hackers are Russian?” Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said through a translator during a visit to Athens on Wednesday. “You blame Russia for everything. It is very ‘in’ now.”

Last month hackers obtained a database password for Russian runner Yuliya Stepanova, a whistle-blower and key witness for the Wada investigations. She and her husband, a former official with the Russian national antidoping agency, are now living at an undisclosed location in North America.

The International Olympic Committee said after Tuesday’s Wada statement it “strongly condemns such methods, which clearly aim at tarnishing the reputation of clean athletes.”

The hackers, who have set up their own web site, have not responded to messages seeking comment. Their chosen name, “Fancy Bears,” appears to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a collection of Russia-linked hackers that security researchers have blamed for a recent spate of attacks—and which Wada holds responsible for the current breach.

The group has proclaimed its allegiance to Anonymous, the loose-knit movement of online mischief-makers, and says it hacked Wada to show the world “how Olympic medals are won.”

“We’ll keep on telling the world about doping in elite sports,” the group said on Thursday. “Stay tuned for new leaks.”

FAKE PASSPORTS S

CANADA’S wheelchair racer Brent Lakatos competes in the men’s 100-meter T53-Round 1. AP

Navigating Rio can be tough R

IO DE JANEIRO—Inside the Olympic Park, there are ramps, strategically placed railings, tactile paving inside venues and more. It’s evident that experts designed the grounds for the Summer Games and Paralympics to be accessible to people with disabilities.

But outside the venues is a different story.

For those with disabilities, navigating Rio de Janeiro can range from inconvenient to daunting, something Brett Gravatt can attest to.

Gravatt is a student at Penn State who uses a wheelchair and is part of a journalism class visiting Brazil to help supplement coverage of the Paralympics for The Associated Press. Though the students are staying in a business hotel close to the main grounds, the morning commute for Gravatt through a recently developed neighborhood involves navigating his way down a dirt path, through weeds, rocks and tree roots.

His classmates walk along a sidewalk that is not smoothly paved, but made of flat stones, each several inches high, with a big space between them.

“Separate but equal,” Gravatt jokes, as he makes way to the rapid-transit station, which has a handicapped entrance and space on the bus for a wheelchair.

It’s just a taste of what life in Rio—a place with glaring contrasts between haves and have nots—is like, advocates for the disabled community say. While some improvements have been made to the sprawling city of more than

6 million to improve access for all its citizens in the run-up to the Olympics and Paralympics, including a new commuter-rail line, even organizers agree the situation is far from perfect.

“I mean, officially, all of the venues here are accessible and they are more accessible than anywhere else in the city,” said Mario Andrada, spokesman for the Rio organizing committee.

“But if you have an accessibility expert he or she will find a lot of black holes.”

It doesn’t take much to make life harder. On a recent night at the track-and-field stadium, for example, someone parked an official Rio 2016 car so close to the access ramp that no one in a wheelchair could use it—instead leaving a curb at least 3 inches high to negotiate.

And even in Centro, Rio’s upscale downtown neighborhood, the mosaic-style sidewalk does not lend itself to anyone in a wheelchair or who has trouble getting over uneven surfaces.

On paper, the rights of the disabled are well-established in this nation of more than 200 million people.

“In Brazil we have great laws but they’re not enforced,” said Teresa Costa d’Amaral, founder of the Brazilian Institute for the Rights of the Disabled Person, a group that files civil suits to help protect the rights of disabled citizens. “It’s not the laws that are the problem it’s our government.”

The issue is far worse for the city’s poor, she said.

“If you live in a favela, you often have to stay home unless you have friends or family to carry

you in and out,” Costa D’Amaral said, a narrative 38-year-old Carmen Lucia Mansur knows well.

Mansur was born with a congenital birth defect affecting her legs and limiting her mobility. Mansur has four children, and her 18-year-old son, Yuri, was born with the same birth defect.

Both Mansur and Yuri have undergone multiple surgeries, fully covered by the Brazilian government, to improve their condition. Mansur’s abilities have improved dramatically, whereas Yuri’s have not. The young man must rely on crutches to walk.

As a result of many medical absences, Yuri has been held back in school. At age 18, he began high school this year. He was initially set to attend a local school with his neighborhood friends, but discovered that the school only had stairs and was not accessible.

So he had to attend a different high school, Frederico Fellini, because it was equipped with ramps. But that caused another problem: Although the school itself is more accessible, getting there is difficult.

Mansur met with the principal to request transportation for her son because of his disability: That was denied. The principal says the school doesn’t provide transportation to anyone.

Yuri attempted to take the public bus to school on his own, but found that, once he made his way to the distant stop, if he was alone the driver would not stop.

“I worked for three years, then I had to choose between work and my kid who has a disability and I opt for my kid. Now I’m unemployed, and on a daily basis it’s difficult to get him on a bus,” Mansur said.

Yuri said the greatest difficulty is when he gets off his bus and begins his journey home. He described making his way up 41 stairs. “I go up five or six steps, and then I take a break, and go,” he said. AP

EOUL, South Korea—Al Nasr was eliminated from the Asian Champions League on Wednesday, despite outscoring El Jaish of Qatar, 3-1, in the two-leg quarterfinal.

But there was major controversy along the way involving the United Arab Emirates (UAE) side.

Two goals in the 3-0 victory by Al Nasr in Qatar in the first leg were scored by talented striker Wanderley. The Brazilian joined Al Nasr in June from fellow UAE club Sharjah and was registered as an Indonesian national after acquiring a passport from the Southeast Asian nation.

In a statement issued on Monday, however, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) ruled the passport was fake. The striker was already provisionally suspended while the investigation was carried out. At the same time, the organization ruled, Al Nasr “forfeited” the first leg and El Jaish was awarded a 3-0 victory.

El Jaish scored the only goal on Wednesday to officially win the quarterfinal, 4-0, on aggregate and advance to the semifinals.

The AFC refused to disclose the identity of two other players currently under investigation, but according to Jack Kerr of the Sports Integrity Initiative, an organization dedicated to transparency in sport, there could be more than 30 players in Asia playing under fake documentation.

“Even Fifa and the AFC have trouble working out how many players are using fake or fraudulent passports,” Kerr told The Associated Press. “After all, given the close ties between government and sportin Asia, there may be people within the bureaucracy forging documents for players.”

In April 2015 the UAE was the focus of a similar episode, though one confined to domestic soccer. Sharjah questioned how Al Wasl’s Brazilian player Fabio Lima had ended up with an Uzbekistan passport that reportedly had belonged to a female. Within a week, Sharjah had withdrawn its complaint.

Registering players as Asian can be useful to clubs. In the UAE league, as in most leagues in Asia and in the federation’s Champions League, a “3 plus 1” rule is in place. Under the rule, clubs are limited to fielding four foreign players—three from anywhere in the world and one from another AFC member-nation. A highly rated Brazilian striker with an Asian passport could be highly sought-after addition to many rosters.

There has been controversy with national teams, too. Fifa is investigating a complaint filed FC Seoul’s Dejan Damjanovic (left) fights for the ball against Dai in October 2015 by the Palestine Football Lin of China’s Shandong Luneng Association. It is alleged that in a 2018 FC at the recent Asian Football World Cup qualifier, East Timor fielded Confederation’s Champions League seven ineligible Brazilian-born players. quarterfinal at Seoul World Cup Wanderley’s case has been handled Stadium in Seoul. AP rapidly. His two goals in the first-leg win in August alerted the media in Indonesia, No. 191 in the world in Fifa’s rankings, with questions asked about him being a possible recruit for the national team.

On August 31 Jakarta’s Justice Ministry said no passport had ever been issued to the player. The AFC, satisfied that the documents are fake, is now focusing its investigation as to which party—player, club or both—is responsible for the deception.

El Jaish’s win in the second leg came with Wanderley watching from the sidelines.

Al Nasr denounced the forfeit decision on social media. Ahead of the second leg in Dubai, the club’s coach Ivan Jovanovic said he could not accept or understand it. AP