The GOCC
perks and RA 10149

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor PATRICK PANGILINAN Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

Probably the most welcome bill to be passed by the Philippine Senate in recent years is the Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations Act of 2011, that was signed into law by President Benigno Aquino III last week, now known as Republic Act 10149.

This is the long-sought for legislation that will control the unbelievable perks and benefits that officers of such entities, now also known as the GOCCs, generously help themselves to in the course of their incumbency that, it seemed, not even the exceptions noted by the Commission on Audit could control.

No less than President Aquino himself had denounced such excesses in his address to Congress shortly after he assumed office last year. And that was the cue that led to more exposés on such acts of the GOCC executives which, even if they could justify them as legal, are clearly not moral when one compares them to the income and benefits of other government officials and workers whose duties are more demanding.

The author of the bill was Senator Franklin Drilon who meticulously made studies and researches before exposing what even seemed to be preposterous justifications and nomenclature for the extra privileges approved for themselves by the Board of Directors of such institutions.

As later detailed and released to the media, such perks and “extras”, meaning, in addition to their regular salaries and allowances, including those that seemed to have been approved for the flimsiest reasons, were given such names as variable pay and others, special car loans, anniversary bonuses, bonus differentials, additional compensation, cash gifts, children’s allowance, family allowance, etcetera, etcetera. Some of the GOCCs were even found to be paying their officers and workers as much as the equivalent of 25 months a year!

How much those government corporations could have remitted to the National Treasury for worthy government projects if they had not siphoned off such millions annually, one cannot imagine.

Now, with the passage of this law, let us hope that such practices will stop, and that any efforts to circumvent it will be exposed at once.*