THERE is this audit report by the Commission on Audit (COA) that seems to put in a bad light the Lopez Group’s ABS-CBN Foundation Inc. (AFI), a nonstock, nonprofit group that has positioned itself as a champion of environmental protection. It is headed by Regina Paz “Gina” L. Lopez.
The COA report is mainly about how the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) has not been receiving its rightful share of revenues generated for the past several years by the La Mesa Ecopark since the AFI assumed the management of its operations (2004 to 2009).
The audit report, issued in 2011, also raised other fundamental issues in the project’s financial operations, such as the yet-to-be-approved management fee of 15 percent (of gross revenues) that the AFI is demanding, but is already collecting as manager of the ecopark.
Under the memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the AFI and the MWSS that is yet to be ratified by the agency’s board, 40 percent of the ecopark’s net income is supposed to go to the MWSS, 30 percent to the AFI and 30 percent to the Quezon City government. If you do the math, this sharing of net profit, plus 15 percent of the gross, would give the AFI the lion’s share of the park’s income.
However, according to an MWSS official, the profit-sharing scheme has all but been unilaterally scrapped by the AFI, which has been handling the ecopark’s revenues since day one. The COA report said:
“Since 2005 no distribution of the share out of the net income was done by the AFI. The AFI has gone overboard by collecting management fees of 15 percent [of the gross income] and still holding on to the 100-percent net income for the past seven years.”
When I first read the COA report three years ago, my first reaction was to suspect that most of the issues it raised must have been overtaken by events and rendered academic by now.
But a high MWSS official told me these questions have remained unresolved to this day.
As conceived by the AFI, the La Mesa Ecopark project is meant to complement a broader purpose. The operation of the ecopark would be the revenue-raising arm. Reforestation covers some 2,700 hectares of land around the dam site.
As spelled out in the MOA with the MWSS, the AFI agreed “to support and contribute to the reforestation and forest-protection efforts and programs being undertaken by the MWSS in the La Mesa dam area and has agreed to extend full financial support for the implementation of said programs.” The AFI also agreed that its support and contributions to the undertaking would be given “at no cost to [the] MWSS.”
The La Mesa watershed is a government-owned property titled under the MWSS and commissioned in 1929. It straddles the boundaries of the cities of Quezon and Caloocan, the town of Rodriguez (formerly Montalban), and the provinces of Bulacan and Rizal.
It is the transit point of water coming from three other watersheds—Umiray in Aurora province, and Angat and Ipo in Bulacan. La Mesa houses the filtration plant that distributes water to Mega Manila’s 12 million to 14 million residents. La Mesa is also the last forest of its size in the National Capital Region.
But while there is no quarrel or issue with the way the AFI has implemented its La Mesa “resource-management framework plan,” which was approved by former MWSS Administrator Jose F. Mabanta and the agency’s board of trustees in 2002, the questions being raised about the AFI’s handling of the ecopark’s financial operations continue to bother MWSS officials.
Incidentally, it should be pointed out that the there have been four MWSS administrators who have come and gone since the AFI undertook the reforestation effort. These were Jose F. Mabanta, Orlando C. Andrade, Lorenzo H. Jamora and Diosdado Jose M. Allado. The current administrator is Gerardo A.I. Esquivel.
To be concluded on Wednesday
E-mail: omerta_bdc@yahoo.com.