LIVELIHOOD ASSISTANCE

The government has been funding livelihood programs for many years now, but it seems to me that generally speaking, there are very few success stories to tell as far as this area of performance is concerned. As I see it now, it seems that the problem lies in the fact that the government has not been able to address the complete supply chain needs of program beneficiaries. Fortunately for all of us, there are public-private sector cooperation (PPC) programs that are working in place to make up for what is lacking.
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Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) is a private and non-profit foundation dedicated to promoting business sector commitment to social development. It was established in 1970 by 50 of the country’s prominent business leaders at that time, and has since then become the country’s largest business-led social development foundation. After three decades, PBSP is now planting new seeds- now numbering about 180 corporate members, charting new directions and creating active responses to the challenges posed by the times. It has also become a shining example of the PPC approach in the Philippines.
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The Corporate Volunteers for Enterprise Development (CVED) is a unique business advisory service that is sponsored by PBSP. It aims to strengthen small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) by providing access to technology and expertise to small entrepreneurs through volunteer business advising. CVED is a partnership between the Canadian Executive Services Organization (CESO) with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). CVED helps facilitate a perfect match for entrepreneur beneficiaries seeking business management pointers from its pool of business advisers. In effect, CVED has established an organized way of providing strategic business advice to Filipino entrepreneurs.
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In the CVED approach, entrepreneurs will work directly with committed volunteer expert advisers with skills and expertise important to the success of business operations. They will help provide advice for a specific business need to help expand operations of the business or overcome specific difficulties. Already up and running, CVED has ongoing pilot projects in Pampanga, Cebu, Bohol and Davao.
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Among the CVED services are marketing management, production management, organization and management, financial management and information and communications technology. It is important to note at this point that PBSP has a separate program for financing. That is one good thing about the PBSP approach, as they have dedicated programs for specific needs. In the case of CVED for instance, it is able to focus specifically on advising, without having to worry about the financing needs of its clients. The Small and Medium Enterprise Credit Program (SMEC) is the wholesale lending facility of PBSP. It aims to provide access to micro, small and medium enterprises outside Metro Manila using thrift and rural banks as funding conduits. Aside from credit, SMEC provides business support services to help improve productivity and competitiveness of entrepreneurs.
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CESO is a private, not for profit Canadian organization of expert business advisers providing assistance to small and medium scale enterprises, businesses, communities and organizations. It has over 3,000 volunteers with solid experience in more than 150 professional, management and technical areas who serve as advisers, trainers and mentors to clients all over the world. In a way, CVED with its 300 experts has become the local counterpart of CESO.
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I was very happy to meet Mr. Felix Tonog, the Area Manager of PBSP and his colleague, Ms. Rowena (Weng) Rivera, the Corporate Volunteer Coordinator of PBSP. Our meetings made me feel a little bit nostalgic, because I remembered my stint at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), where I headed the Transfer of Knowledge through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN) Program, a partnership between DFA and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). I also remembered my stint at the Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS), where I served as Group Product Manager of Bliss Marketing Corporation (BMC) and also as a Marketing Consultant (Fellow) of the University of Life (UL). All told, there are many similarities between the approach of CVED, TOKTEN, BMC and UL in serving SMEs. Thanks to Felix and Weng, they have readily agreed to guest in my new radio show, together with the volunteers and clients of CVED. By the way, check out http://senseneres.blogspot.com/

LIVELIHOOD AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Starting on May 29 (this coming Monday), I will have a radio program on DZXL (558 KHZ on your radio dial), the anchor station of Radio Mindanao Network (RMN). I will be on the air every day from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, together with Ferdie Baja, my partner way back in DZEC. The title of our show is “Gulong ng Kabuhayan” which tells you right away that our main theme is livelihood. Our partners in the field will be the “Rescue Rangers”, a civic action group that Ferdie and I co-founded. All my regular guests in my livelihood program in DZAR will join me in my new show, namely Felix Linsag, Dennis San Juan, Jai Om Alas, Ben Garcia, Rene Abad, Benjie Angeles, Mon Ignacio, Ben Milano, Luz Sabas and Dr. Ernie Santos.

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Broadly interpreted, the term “livelihood” has a double meaning, because it is associated with having a job and having a business. Whereas it may be possible for a single proprietor to have a “big business”, more often than not, solo entrepreneurs usually have “small businesses”, small enough for them to be considered as “self-employed”. What this means is that most of the small scale entrepreneurs are all alone by themselves (sometimes with the help of their family members) in facing the challenges of owning and running a business, unlike the big businesses that have all the manpower and the resources to survive and win in the marketplace.

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Generally speaking, it is easier for most entrepreneurs to make products than to sell them. This is of course a relative comparison that has to be qualified, because there are some products that are easier to sell than the others. Needless to say, selling in a public market is easier than selling in a city mall, in terms of packaging, pricing and merchandizing. While it could be said that any producer could sell any product in any public market, that is not the same in the case of the supermarkets, where the competition is more intense, more so in the case of packaged goods.

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What can the government do to help these small entrepreneurs? Is the government supposed to be doing anything at all, aside from making affordable credit available to them? For discussion purposes, let us proceed on the assumption that they would have access to financing; therefore their remaining problems would be manufacturing and marketing. Assuming that they would have the money to buy the equipment that they need, it still goes without saying that they would still need assistance in the form of technical advice. Is this a service that they could easily get from the government? Comparing these two remaining needs, I think that their more critical need is marketing assistance, in all its aspects.

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Each time that you are in a supermarket, look at the products, and you will notice that there are very few Filipino goods that are “complete” in terms of positioning, branding, packaging and labeling. I think that this sad situation exists, because generally speaking, they could not afford to buy the expert marketing advice that they need. In my mind, this is where the government could really help. Sad to say, the assistance that the government gives to them is usually fragmented, meaning that isolated services are available from one agency to another, but there seems to be no mechanism for the entire government structure to provide them with the complete supply chain management of the entire marketing process.

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I do not have all the answers myself, but I do have some clues about what to do. To start with, small entrepreneurs are bound by the same marketing rules as the big businessmen. What this means is that their products need to have the right positioning, branding, packaging and labeling on top of the right pricing and merchandizing. Who is going to provide these services to them? As I see it, this should be provided by both the national and local governments, an expectation that should be clarified first hand, in order to avoid finger pointing and “blame throwing”.

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Working with one entrepreneur at a time, I am going to try doing something about this problem. Towards this end, I have already talked to Tony Gatmaitan, one of this country’s top marketing experts. He has agreed to help small entrepreneurs improve their products, free of charge at that. That is good, because we could not really afford to pay Tony for his services. There are other experts who will be assisting in this project; I will report their names to you as soon as agreements with them are firmed up. If you are a marketing expert or a marketing student and would like to help out, please contact me. If your company has a marketing operation, you could also help, so please contact me also. This invitation is for big and small companies.

PUBLIC ACCESS

The United Nations measures success and failure of local governance in terms of access to public services and utilities. According to one school of thought, public safety is the number one concern of local governance, but this is of course debatable, because the interpretation would depend on local values, cultures and expectations. In recent times however, some issues have emerged, in effect questioning what ought to be considered as “public services”. This too is debatable, because the interpretation would also depend on what is locally fundable, deliverable and sustainable.

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The water service provider in one part of Metro Manila has recently announced that the quality of water that is now available on tap in their service areas is already comparable to bottled water. This is very welcome news, assuming that it is 100% true, but this bit of good news opens up the issue of regulating water companies or issuing quality standards, to ensure that the general population would really gain access to clean potable water from their taps, thus eliminating the need to buy bottled water.

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As I see it, access to potable water is poverty related issue, because the poor do not have access to this life sustaining resource, they would be forced to buy bottled water, notwithstanding the fact that it is clearly a burden that they could not afford. Over the years, those who could afford it have gotten used to buying bottled water, to the point that it has become a way of life for many households. Having been used to it, those who could afford to buy this resource have practically resigned to the idea that there is no other way of having access to clean potable water, except to buy it, just like their having accepted the fact that there is no other way to gain access to cooking gases except to buy these in liquid petroleum gas (LPG) containers.

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I find it ironic that when Light Rail Transit (LRT) and the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) systems were put into place, most people considered it as a jump into modernization, since the two systems appeared to be using modern technologies. Unknown to most people perhaps, the LRT and MRT systems are really just “cable cars” in the strict sense of the word, meaning to say that these trains are not much different from the “tranvias” that used to be operated by what was then known as the Manila Electric & Rail Company (MERALCO). Until now, it still makes sense for an electric service provider to also operate a cable car system, because the two services are very much logically compatible with each other.

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Certainly there is no point in crying over spilled milk, but I really would like to know what happened to the gas distribution network of the Manila Gas Company. Until now, it still makes a lot of sense to distribute fuels via gas lines, because of the economies of scale involved. And mind you, these fuels are not just for cooking, because up to now, gas lines power the street lights in many cities around the world, economically I should say, comparing it of course to the electricity powered street lights.

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With a mix of desperation and amusement, many writers have noted the shift in consumer preferences towards products packed in sachets, a behavior that is obviously motivated by the fact that these smaller packs are more affordable to most consumers. In truth and in fact however, the unit costs of these products in sachets are actually more expensive than the costs of products that are packaged in bigger containers, a reality that is due also to economies of scale.

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I have purposely not mentioned the name of the water company that has boldly made the quality claim, because the other company in the other part of the metropolis has not said anything in response. I will eventually mention the name as soon as I get a better reading of the competitive situation in this service industry. In my view, it is better to assist water companies that are experiencing difficulties in their delivery, rather than to blame them, because the bottom line really is to improve access for all.

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Since we now know that a water service provider could possibly attain the quality of bottled water, perhaps it is time that the government would issue standards that would make it mandatory to give access to this higher quality of water nationwide, so that everyone, including the poor would not have to spend their hard earned money on this resource that is now considered as a luxury. While we are at it, perhaps it is also high time for the government to study how the other utilities could be regulated so that their providers would be forced to deliver these factors in more affordable price levels.

ROAD SAFETY STANDARDS

The “color coding” scheme in Metro Manila is already a generally accepted practice by now, but I still see something that is fundamentally wrong about this approach. Just to put this discussion in the right perspective, governance should be a two-way street, in the sense that taxation should offer a direct benefit for every peso that is taken from the taxpayer’s pocket. Having said that, I would like to say for the record that the “road user’s tax” is actually a form of triple taxation, because it is a specific tax that is imposed on top of two other taxes, namely the income tax and the value added tax. In some local jurisdictions, it is actually a case of quadruple taxation, because it is imposed on top of sales taxes.

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Having paid all the taxes that is due the government, motorists have all the right to freely use all the roads, in theory at least. If this is the case, why is their right to freely use being constrained by the “color coding” scheme? I understand why the local jurisdictions in Metro Manila are diligently following this scheme, because there seems to be no other alternative as of now. But should this really be the case? Should this scheme really go on forever? By the way, there is another issue that is related to this topic, and that is the right of car owners to maximize the use of their asset, having invested their money into it.

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Now going straight to my point, I think that there are two ways to improve the flow of traffic in Metro Manila. One way is to maximize the available road surface, and the other way is to strictly enforce safety and emission standards. These two approaches are actually inter-related to each other. If the “supply” of available (or navigable) road surface is increased, then the “demand” for controlling the volume of vehicles could decrease. Still on the subject of rights, there are many owners and occupants of structures on the roads that have no right to be there, meaning that they are using the road surface illegally. Conversely, if non-compliant vehicles are removed from the roads, then the “demand” for road surface could be reduced.

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Our failure to implement the Clean Air Act actually has a direct correlation to color coding scheme. This is so because if only the law was implemented, the “supply” of vehicles would have been reduced. If the government really wants to be fair, it would have been fairer to “punish” those who do not comply with the laws, rather than “reward” those who did not comply, by giving them the “right” to use the roads, by freely taking part in the coding scheme. Take note at this point that since there is no enforcement of vehicle safety standards in this country, unsafe vehicles are allowed to use the roads, at great risks to the taxpayers who paid for the construction of these roads.

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As far as I know, the function of the Land Transportation Regulatory Board (LTFRB) is to grant transport franchises, while the function of the Land Transportation Commission (LTC) is to issue vehicle registrations and driver licenses. Between these two agencies however, which of them makes sure that the vehicles being registered (based on franchises granted) are safe for road travel? As I understand it, there seems to be no procedure for inspecting compliance with vehicle safety standards. What this means is that any vehicle that is submitted for registration (assuming that a franchise has been granted) is just presumed to be safe, without anyone checking on anything.

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It’s either part of our national culture, or it is really part of human nature for people to be alarmed only when many victims die from a highly publicized disaster, but not when victims die from “slow deaths” or unseen emergencies that are not reported in the news. Based on actual numbers however, it is highly possible that more people are dying now from the lethal effects of air pollution within a one year period, compared to the total number of victims who perish in road accidents within the same one year period. Unfortunately right now, no attention is given to national concerns that do not make it to the headlines

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The debate will still go on whether the culprit is our culture or our human nature, but in the meantime, I would say that the low state of our road safety standards is directly due to the low expectations of the people themselves. To illustrate my point, very few roads in this country could be considered as “safe”, except perhaps for the North and South Expressways. Even with this sad situation, no one seems to be complaining, and everyone seems to be just waiting for another accident to happen. Apparently, the first thing that we should improve or upgrade is our level of awareness when it comes to road safety standards.

BUSINESS PROCESS INTEGRATION IN GOVERNANCE

Every now and then, the government talks about streamlining its operations, but so far, no one in the bureaucracy seems to be talking about business process engineering (BPE) and its companion science, supply chain management (SCM). Some of you might be familiar with business process re-engineering (BPR) which is really the more popular term, but in the case of the government, I prefer to use the term BPE, because of my belief that most of the government processes have not been engineered in the first place. The bottom line however, is that there is a need for business process integration in the government, along with SCM.

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To illustrate my point about the need for business process integration in the government, allow me to use the existing public safety process as an example. In many countries across the world, the Interior Ministry serves as the “catch all” agency that handles all other internal matters (as opposed to the external matters that are handled by the Foreign Ministry) that are not addressed by the other line ministries. Here in the Philippines, the Department of Interior & Local Government (DILG) is functioning as our Interior Ministry and this is perhaps the reason why it usually absorbs many residual functions that could not be handled by the other line departments.

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In the organizational structure of the DILG, the police, fire and jail functions are lumped together under the umbrella of “public safety”. This is probably a bureaucratic invention that took form out of practical necessity, because there seems to be no other country in the world where these three municipal functions have only been centralized, but have also been clustered together. The Philippines is also probably the only country in the world where the jail personnel are considered as part of the “uniformed” services, complete with the implied military ranks.

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To begin with, the name of the Bureau of Jail Management & Penology (BJMP) appears to be a misnomer, because the facilities run by the local authorities are really not supposed to be “jails”, because they are only housing “accused suspects”, and not “convicts”, because in theory, they are still awaiting court decisions to be convicted or not. For all intents and purposes, these “jails” are more in the nature of “detention centers” or “dormitories”, if you please. The BJMP counterpart in the national government, the Bureau of Corrections (BUCOR) also suffers from a bit of a misnomer, because the buzz word in their line of work should really be “rehabilitation”, and not “correction”. Jointly taken together, the “membership” of the BJMP and the BUCOR in the “public safety” umbrella is a bit off tangent, not unless it is only as a figure of speech that they are considered to be performing safety functions.

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As far as I know, the Philippines is also one of the few countries in the world where the disaster mitigation function is still being handled by the military. Well, there could be a technicality in this regard, because the Department of National Defense (DND) is really supposed to be a civilian agency, even if they are on top of the military establishment. By comparison for instance, the federal emergency management function in the USA is handled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a civilian agency. By the way, “emergency management” appears to be a better term, since “disasters” per se could not be “managed”. By definition, catastrophes such as typhoons, tsunamis and earthquakes are only the causes of disasters, not the disaster itself. By the way, disasters could hardly be “coordinated” either.

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No matter how you would look at it, the “public safety” functions that are handled by the DILG and the “disaster management” functions that are handled by the DND are parts of one and the same supply chain or business process that could be, or should be integrated. At this point, we should note that the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) is only a “council” and not a line agency as its name implies, although its supervising agency, the Office of Civil Defense (ODC) is part of the bureaucracy. Down the line, the NDCC has subordinate councils in the regional, provincial, municipal and local levels, all of them not operating as line functions.

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“Homeland Security” is a concept that transcends “public safety”. As a matter of fact, it also seems to transcend “national security” because in the American protocol, the DHS is a full department, while the National Security Agency (NSA) is not, even if the National Security Adviser has Cabinet rank. Although the DHS was just recently created, it is deemed so important, such that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that is already decades old was placed under it. Picking up from the recent experiences of the DHS however, the civilized world could not help but notice that it makes sense to integrate all the “safety” and “security” functions into one supply chain.

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The Makati City Government has created a “Protective Services” sector that integrates the police, fire, jail, rescue, public safety assistance and ambulance functions into one integrated supply chain. Public assistance is provided by the Department of Public Safety (DPS), formerly the Makati Public Safety Assistance (MAPSA) Group. As part of the integration, members of the Makati Rescue Team accompany ambulance units to provide Emergency Medical Team (EMT) services as they are deployed from the Ospital ng Makati (OSMAK). All members of this sector are interconnected to each other through an integrated voice and data communications center.

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As I understand it, the bulk of the “first line” manpower used by the NDCC in the field is under the DILG, consisting of the members of the “uniformed services” and civilian volunteers. The latter term is partly confusing and is also a bit of a misnomer, because in theory, the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) and the BJMP are all supposed to be civilian agencies. The “second line” of manpower is provided by the DND, consisting of soldiers, the real “uniformed services” people. As it looks now, the NDCC is supposed to be part of “preparedness”, although it is not directly in control of the people who are supposed to be under them.

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It is just my observation, but is it really possible for a mere “council” to be both responsible and accountable for the overall public safety concerns in the whole country? As I understand it, “councils” do not have a legal personality, so they could hardly be blamed for anything. The way the NDCC is structured now, it is really just a “coordinating” council, so much so that the actual blame for negligence or inaction could easily be blamed on the subordinate councils at the lower levels.

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In my opinion, it is about time that the function of the NDCC be elevated to an executive agency with a Cabinet rank, just like the DHS. For good measure, the responsibility of this new agency should include man-made disasters, and it should include terrorist threats. Come to think of it, it should also include the management of environmental threats. Let us make sure that we include air pollution, as it is now a “slow motion” emergency.