Jesse Robredo did ‘more for less’

NAGA CITY, Philippines—Being a tightwad, or “koyom na palad” is a moniker few individuals want attached to their names. But in the case of Jesse Robredo, he wore it like a badge. More so when it involved people’s money.

Robredo was known for “doing more with less” and everyone who saw firsthand how he managed to do this were in awe and remain his admirers three years after he died in a plane crash in Masbate province on Aug. 18, 2012.

When Robredo was mayor of Naga City, he wanted to haggle down to P2 million an abattoir-upgrading project whose initial cost was placed at P6.5 million. The project cost eventually went down to P5 million.

This was how Francisco Mendoza, the budget officer of Naga City who had worked with Robredo since 1990 in different departments of City Hall, recalled how it happened.

It was sometime in 1994 when the city abattoir had to be upgraded. But Robredo did not just announce the bidding of a waste-water treatment facility.

“We canvassed from government and private operators of abattoirs in the region to get the fairest and lowest deal to build and maintain a water-treatment facility,” Mendoza narrated.

One private contractor priced the project at P6.5 million and after much haggling, Robredo offered P2 million.

The negotiations happened during a lunch meeting at a restaurant in Naga City.

“As we were conversing, we found out from the private contractor that he was referred to (the Naga City project) by a government executive (of) a (local government unit) in Camarines Sur, which meant that he must give a cut to him in the deal,” Mendoza said.

The former budget officer said they persuaded the contractor to cut the local government executive out of the deal. But realizing that the P2 million was an “impossible bid,” the project price was set at P5 million.

Mendoza said the contractor did not get the contract automatically but had to go through the rigors of public bidding. For Robredo, he was able to determine the actual cost that guided the bidding process.

“(Robredo) could have just taken that deal (of getting a cut in the project cost). But at what cost? Corruption down the line?” Mendoza said.

Mendoza, now 56 years old or just a year younger than Jesse had he been alive, said Robredo had shown the value of properly utilizing public resources.

Robredo had always shown preference for unbranded equipment rather than branded ones since they could be used the same way at lower cost.

For instance, Robredo had opted for nonbranded bulldozers because the cost of three units was equivalent to one unit of a known brand. Mendoza said the bulldozers that Robredo bought were still working and being used at the city dump.

Robredo also refused to buy brand-new vehicles for the city and instead accepted 10 hand-me-down vehicles from an American car manufacturer.

It was no wonder to Nagueños that Robredo became known as koyom na palad, which means a person with a closed palm from where one cannot extract money.

But being “kuripot” (tightwad) did not mean he was not generous. For Robredo was both generous with his time and effort, and had surpassed expectations in the 19 years that he served as mayor of Naga (from 1988-1998 and from 2001-2010.)

Low-key programs

Naga City Mayor John Bongat, a Robredo protégé, said Robredo’s legacy was not about infrastructure but good governance and low-key programs that might have gone unnoticed, like the Sanggawadan Program that provides educational and domestic support to the poorest constituents of the city.

It is a program that has been in place long before the Pantawid Pamilya (conditional cash transfer) program of the national government had taken off.

“Sanggawadan,” which means “to extend a helping hand,” subsidizes the education of school-age children. It has been credited for the full enrollment rate of elementary and high school students in the city.

It was conceptualized by Robredo in 2000 to address the economic cost that hinders children from going to school. The program rolled on and was institutionalized in 2002 with funding from AusAid of the Australian government.

When the AusAid funding ended after two years, Robredo continued to implement the program, which made Naga achieve a 100-percent enrollment rate at the elementary level, according to Jaime Reblando, city social welfare and development officer.

Reblando said the program was aimed at keeping “vulnerable” children in school until the end of the school year by providing rice incentives to every pupil who attended class. The parents were given the same amount of rice at every parenting education session.

Some 2,200 Sanggawadan beneficiaries receive 30 kilos of rice every quarter, costing the Naga city government at least P6 million a year, he said.

In January this year, the city council authorized Bongat to purchase 7,950 bags of rice for the Sanggawadan Program and another educational project called “Queen,” which is for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations.

Reblando said that through the Sanggawadan, the city government paid the schoolchildren’s contributions for Boy Scout and Red Cross, as well as the dues for parents-teachers associations (PTAs) that schools use to pay their water and power bills, the salaries of security personnel and the purchase of items such as electric fans. The beneficiaries were also given school supplies.

The program likewise involves the city health office and the city nutrition council that provide parents training on health, hygiene and nutrition.

Children were dewormed. The undernourished went through a four-month feeding program while their parents received a continuous supply of nutritional packs.

Governance innovations

Robredo’s lasting legacy has been the innovations he instituted that have made transactions at City Hall more transparent and the delivery of services efficient, according to Bongat.

He said the transparency in governance was spawned by the creation of the Naga City People’s Council that allowed civil society groups to have a say in the budgeting and decision-making processes of the city government.

It was Robredo who systematized the monitoring of the services provided by the city, with the expected output and timeframe of completion posted in every department.

In 2001, Robredo named the innovations in the city’s system the Citizen’s Charter. It was essentially a pledge of the services asked of every city employee and what services the residents should demand from the city government.

Bongat said Robredo, from the moment he sat as mayor in 1988, also reduced the number of steps in obtaining business permits from eight steps to five.

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