21 – The Power and the Passion

In the New Year myself, Aruna and Jo finally got around to making our official courtesy visits to the Governor of the Province, the Mayor of Bacolod and the Provincial Police Chief. These are a requirement of the PNVSCA – the agency that regulates all volunteers that come into the Philippines. Six months late, but better late than never! The Police Chief gave us each a coffee mug; with the Governor we had our photo taken, which appeared in the local Newspaper the following day; but the most eventful was the visit to the Mayor. We had an appointment to meet him in the new city hall which is still being fitted out but is open for receiving visitors. We were kept waiting for over 2 hours until he could see us. We happened to be there on the day that there was a stand off between the city government and the local power supplier. So our Mayor was detained in intense negotiations to try and resolve the problem.

The following article aptly describes the circumstances. It was published on the Experience Negros website on 11 January.

And So There Was Light

Several areas in Bacolod City including the downtown area experienced black-out last Friday night. Except for business establishments with generators, the rest of downtown area had no electricity. The "power struggle" between the city government and the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (CENECO) had shown its ugly face and the consuming public are caught right in the middle of it.

Who's to Blame?

CENECO disconnected the power connection of the Bacolod City Hall, new government center, Libertad Market and other government offices last Thursday morning citing the city's failure to pay its accounts with CENECO.As a result, the Bacolod City government padlocked the administrative building of CENECO after revoking its Mayor's Permit for its failure also to pay its franchise taxes and real estate property taxes to the city.CENECO claimed the black-out last Friday evening was because their vehicles were prevented by the City Legal Enforcement Unit from leaving their premises so they could not send their personnel.This allegation was denied by City Legal Officer Allan Zamora in the newspaper. He said they only closed the business operations of CENECO and not their maintenance department. He said the vehicles of CENECO were not prevented to go out and were even parked outside the CENECO premises.No matter how the two sides keep throwing the blame at each other, it's still the public that's in the losing end. This has to stop since it has already affected public service and the business sector and sending a bad impression to the investors.

All's Well That Ends Well

It's a good thing somebody mediated between the City Government and CENECO before things really got out of hand. Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, chairperson of the Committee on Communications and Energy, was reported to have asked Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra to mediate between the city and CENECO.The city government and the CENECO reportedly arrived at a compromise agreement during a closed-door meeting at the Bishop's House last Friday night. Power was restored in the City Hall and other areas in Bacolod City late Friday night.We hope this will be the last time this incident will happen since a repeat of this may have a long term negative effect for Bacolod. Most investors prefer investing in the city because of the "business-friendly climate" and we, the public hope it will stay that way.

While we were kept waiting, we certainly weren’t bored! Also waiting to see the Mayor at that time was a reporter and camera man from the local community television station who had an appointment to interview the Mayor. To kill time, they decided to turn the camera and microphone onto us! The questions were quite innocent to start with “How do like Bacolod?”, “How do you find the Filipino people?” etc, but soon moved to “Are you single?” and “Have you found Filipino boyfriends yet?”! When I answered I had an Australian boyfriend of 5 years he (thankfully) found that boring and quickly moved on to Aruna and Jo, and as one is single and the other has a Filipino boyfriend, they were much more interesting to interview! It will apparently air on the community television station in a month or so!

Speaking of television, a documentary has been produced to commemorate 10 years of the AYAD program. It follows the adventures of 6 AYADs on their assignments in 6 different countries. It will screen on network 10 in Australia on March 7. They don’t have a title or a time slot as yet so keep an eye on your television guide.

The last 2 weeks of January I had booked to visit Jordi in Vietnam. We hadn’t seen each other since he visited me in the Philippines for a week on his way to Vietnam. I was eager to check out the life he’d made in Hanoi, meet his friends and colleagues and compare the experience of being an AYAD in the Philippines with being an AYAD in Vietnam. However, after some negotiation, it was agreed that I would reschedule my departure to leave a few days later than planned so I could be present for a very special event that was now going to be taking place on Saturday 17th January. It was the handover (or turnover as its called here) ceremony of the GK Hua Ming village at Handumanan – the village I did the site development plan for in August, construction began in September and 4 months later 50 houses are built! So understandably, I really wanted to be there. Part of the reason the ceremony had been rescheduled to this particular day was because it was the 59th Birthday of Mr Tony Meloto, founder of GK, and he personally flew in from Manila on his birthday to be at our ceremony!

The day was split into two – the paint-a-home contest in the morning and then the formal handover ceremony to the beneficiaries in the afternoon. It was a cool drizzly day. In fact, only a few days before, Bacolod had its coldest day in 10 years – it got down to 17 degrees centigrade! (Actually very pleasant!). Anyway, the weather did not deter the enthusiasm of the teams who came to participate in painting a home and luckily the rain held off long enough for both coats of paint to dry! We were on site from 7.30am and registration opened at 8am. Each team consisted of 5 volunteers and 1 beneficiary. The volunteers came from all walks of life, there were current and former students of St.Johns school who were sponsoring the village; there was a team from the local fire brigade; a team of nuns; and not to be outdone a couple of teams from Bacolod cycling club who arrived on their bikes and got stuck into the painting while still wearing their lycra cycling gear.

My role for the day was to be one of the judges for the paint-a-home contest along with fellow architects Butch and Joe. The criteria for the judging was teamwork, cleanliness and coverage of paint. Teams could receive an extra 5% if they were able to save 1 gallon or more of paint and were deducted 5% if they did not finish within the allotted time of 1.5hrs per coat. It was great to walk around and see everyone having so much fun working together – the bayanihan spirit was definitely alive and well.

In between coats, everyone stopped for lunch. All the teams had been asked to bring a picnic to share with their beneficiary which they ate inside the home they were painting. To supplement the lunch, the St Johns Alumni association had sponsored 5 big whole roast pigs which were cut up and distributed.

At about 3pm Tony Meloto arrived and the ceremony began in the usual fashion with a prayer, the national anthem and a welcome. The first item was to award the winners of the paint-a-home contest. I had the privilege of announcing the winners on behalf of the judges. There were 9 gift vouchers to award, so we had chosen 5 special awards and then the 4 top place getters from the points tally. The cyclists got an award for their dramatic arrival on bicycles, a family who just got on with the job got the quiet achievers award and 2 teams in adjacent houses got a special award for their cooperation on creating something artistic on the divider wall of the duplex. The overall winner had not only painted the house but also done some landscaping around it.

The ceremony then proceeded to the presentation of certificates to the beneficiaries, a speech by Tony Meloto, a response from 3 chosen beneficiaries and the blessing of the houses by the priests. Not all 50 houses were being handed over this time because only 36 beneficiaries had qualified in terms of the minimum 250 hours of sweat equity. The remaining 14 families will get their hours up in the coming weeks as toilets, doors and windows are installed and the landscaping completed. Another handover ceremony will be held for this batch later.

Once the ceremony was complete, Tony Meloto and all the GK people proceeded to GK ERH village (the most well established GK village in the province) where they were putting on a huge dinner and show for 450 guests in honour of Tony’s birthday. GK ERH village is a community of 130 families, a well established organic farm, a training centre and guest accommodation. A local hotel has been providing training in hospitality and a chef from Manila has been donating her time to teach food preparation. Much of the vegetables and salad is grown on site in the organic farm. Every time I’ve eaten there the food has got better and better, and this time, it felt like I was eating at a 5 star restaurant! The food was delicious and the service excellent. And to think that all this was prepared by people who some 4 or 5 years ago were among the poorest of the poor in Bacolod city, squatting on land that was not theirs in makeshift huts wondering where their next meal would come from. It’s truly amazing and inspiring to see what is possible.

After dinner the children of the village performed a dance number, the village band played a few songs and then a birthday cake was presented to Tony. It was in the shape of a GK house! He gave a touching speech in that incredible way he has of inspiring the passion in everyone to do more.