JASMS parents slam STI takeover of PWU

MANILA, Philippines – The parents’ association of Philippine Women’s University-Jose Abad Santos Memorial School (PWU-JASMS) in Quezon City has taken the cudgels for the school’s founding owners, who are facing a takeover by investor STI Holdings Inc.

Last Dec. 9, the Tanco group-led STI recently served notices of default to the Benitez group, the owners of PWU and real estate holding company Unlad Resources Development Corporation, demanding a P702-million payment from PWU and P223 million from Unlad by Dec. 16.

In earlier reports, STI allegedly served the notices of default after PWU and Unlad chair Francisco Benitez called for the termination of the agreement with STI in November.

STI warned that if the Benitez group did not pay up, STI would take control of the PWU board and the real properties of PWU and Unlad, including the PWU campus in Manila and the PWU-JASMS campus in Quezon City.

But in a statement over the weekend, the JASMS Parents’ Association (JPA) expressed its belief that STI’s takeover was in retaliation to the parents’ opposition of STI’s “redevelopment plan” for JASMS.

Earlier, it was reported that Amaia Land Inc. had been brought in by the STI for the plan to put a condominium and mall on the 2.2-hectare JASMS campus. The actual school will be whittled down into a nine-story building taking up only 2,000 to 3,000 square meters of the property.

“Our objections were that the JASMS approach to education cannot be implemented effectively and safely in a high-rise building and that operating the school in a construction area, for four years, would not be safe or conducive to learning,” the JPA statement read.

“We also discovered that the area where the condominium towers are to be built would sit on top of an aquifer, an old school pond, which would create sinkholes and create a flooding problem in the Barangay West Triangle area,” the statement added.

The JPA had made their objections known to the Quezon City hall and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, staying the issuance of a zoning permit and an environmental compliance certificate for the construction.

In November, Amaia also issued a statement saying the JASMS development has been put on hold “until issues are settled between the landowner and the parents’ association.”

The parents said STI served the notices of default to PWU in response “to the parents’ actions, which were supported by the Benitez family.”

“The STI style of education is not compatible with the JASMS educational principles and mission—this is at the heart of the issue,” the parents said, in their statement.

“The JPA believes that the original principles by which the [PWU] and JASMS were founded and have been guided through the decades run counter to the objective of the corporation that is now moving for a hostile takeover of PWU and JASMS,” the parents added.

“In principle, the [Benitez] family was opposed to [paying] for transactions that would be contrary to the educational mission of the institution. In its core character,[PWU] and JASMS are both non-profit institutions whose main objective is to re-invest savings towards the development of the [schools],” the parents said.

In earlier reports, STI said the Benitez group has failed to meet obligations under their 2011 deal, in which STI ponied up around P448 million to bail out PWU from foreclosure, in exchange for 40 percent shares of Unlad and 6 out of 15 seats on the PWU board.

STI noted, in a statement: “We came to help PWU and expect to get paid through shares of stocks. After three years of waiting, it now appears the other party has no intention of living up to its end of the agreement. The notices of default were a last resort but necessary to protect the interest of the company and its shareholders.”

In a phone interview, JPA president Vicente Pijano III told the Philippine Daily Inquirer the PWU-JASMS community have been mulling filing for a temporary restraining order against the STI takeover and its possible effects on JASMS operations.

Pijano disclosed that the Tanco group would, in effect, begin the takeover as they had called for a meeting on Monday (Dec. 22) of the PWU board, to see to the resignation of the Benitezes.

Pijano added that the parents and JASMS alumni plan to hold a demonstration on Monday outside the JASMS campus on Edsa in Barangay West Triangle to decry the takeover and show support for the Benitez family.