TESDA’s pork money mill:
Who gets how much, how?

SO WHAT if pork money or earmarks for legislators line the budget of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)? Who gets how much, and how?

Why, in the first place, do legislators have to course their pork monies to TESDA for allotment to private Technical Vocational Institutions (TVIs)?

Read: Part 7 of our series on “Pork a la Gloria, Pork a la PNoy”

* TESDA’s pork money mill: Who gets how much, how?

TESDA Director General Joel Villanueva has expressed a sense of powerlessness when it comes to how pork funds lodged at his agency should be expended, and for which TVIs.

Villanueva told PCIJ last week that legislators, through TESDA’s directors and managers at its regional and provincial offices, are the ones who get to accredit and select the TVIs.

“They were the ones who dictated the costing, the partners, ‘yung ibang tools,” he said, referring to lawmakers who had already channeled their pork to the TVIs through TESDA. Villanueva added that the legislators get to identify which TESDA unit should manage their pork, and the officers of these units in turn get to enroll the service of TVIs.

“The funds are given to the regional and provincial offices,” he said. “Ayoko namang sa akin ma-sentro lahat, kaya sabi ko, kayo mag-manage niyan… ibang-iba ako kaysa sa nauna sa akin dito (I didn’t want everything to be centralized under me so I told them, you manage that… this is where I differ from my predecessor).”

By Villanueva’s account, TESDA has turned into a reform and reformist agency, in part because it had a controversy-ridden past under his predecessor. Augusto ‘Buboy’ Syjuco Jr. was TESDA’s boss.

While he was serving as a congressman of Iloilo’s second district from 1998 to 2001, Syjuco has been charged with graft for alleged misuse of his pork-barrel funds. That, however, was just the beginning of Syjuco’s entanglement with pork and the courts.

Since 2013, the Office of the Ombudsman had filed graft charges against Syjuco before the Sandiganbayan four times.

Just last March, the Ombudsman filed a new criminal case against Syjuco for the purchase of P9.25-million worth of books using TESDA money, through a printing contract that was awarded sans public bidding.

The Ombudsman indicted Syjuco for awarding the contract in July 2006 to Grand C. Graphics, Inc. to print 250,000 copies of a book that he himself wrote, Salabat for the Filipino Soul Book II and which he described to be “a book of Filipino virtues” and “a career guide for Filipino children.”

But Villanueva’s depiction of a TESDA now fairly high in the integrity meter is not one shared by some TESDA employees and partner training institutes.

Two senior employees of TESDA told PCIJ a different story – of “scholarship vouchers” awarded to favored private contractors by TESDA’s regional and provincial offices, in exchange for commissions of 20 to 35 percent of contract cost paid up– front or at the close of the program, always in cold cash.

One of the insiders explained, “At the end of the program, when it’s time for the PO to pay the chosen schools, that’s when there are ‘arrangements.'”

“Uso sa mga PO (provincial offices) ang ganyang kalakaran (Such shenanigans are popular at the POs),” said one of the insiders. “Since PO disburses the scholarship vouchers to their chosen private schools, and the chosen private schools will report their scholars, true or false, there is no way to find out talaga.“

By contrast, the source added, “ang public schools at TESDA training centers, totoo talaga ang naka-declare kasi talagang mahihirap ang mga clients (with the public schools and TESDA training centers, what’s declared is true because the clients are really poor).”

By the account of the source and another TESDA insider, the amounts involved are huge. One of the sources said that the collection, per contract, “would range from 100K (100 thousand pesos) up, depending on the number of scholarships awarded to the schools, which amounts to millions per school.”

The second source and TESDA insider rued that the moneymaking ventures continue to thrive at TESDA because many of its officers and senior employees own either a school or an assessment center with TESDA accreditation.

“The officers of TESDA with have schools or assessment centers, that’s how they earn,” said the second insider. The source added that scholars or schools that want to get such accreditation, in fact, do not have to pay any fees, “but centers are paid by TESDA on a per-head basis times the amount of assessment fee. So, depende ‘yun kung ano trade nila (it depends on what their trade is).”

Both sources also say that on the TESDA board sit at least two owners of schools located in Cavite, Batangas, and Metro Manila, that have been doing good business with TESDA.

“Corruption in the assessment (of scholars) happens,” the second source said, “when private schools pay back the PO, since they were allowed to participate in the assessment. Lahat ng nag-serve as TESDA representative from PO will receive from the assessment centers, JO (job order) included.” The “minimum amount” in such transactions,” said the source, “is 40K pataas (forty thousand pesos up).”

That such sums run into so many digits is not surprising since huge amounts of pork monies have poured into TESDA. In 2012, lawmakers had practically smothered the agency with their PDAF.

Of the 72 legislators who allocated a total of more than P300 million to TESDA in 2012, 68 were party-list and district representatives who channeled P284-million of their PDAF through TESDA. Four senators gave P17.5 million more. — PCIJ, August 2015