Acid Test
This can be an apt description of the little more than 2-year old Marquez-Tolentino administration at the helm of the provincial government of Aklan.
The description maybe considered by readers as self-serving knowing fully well that this corner had actively participated in the campaign for Tibyog Akean candidates during the 2004 local elections as the head of its media bureau handling broadcast and print media propaganda. After the assumption of the new provincial leadership, Governor Carlito S. Marquez promptly picked me as Consultant for Media Affairs. In March last year, after the death of Mike Palomata, Secretary to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, Vice Governor Kel Tolentino appointed me as a replacement.
However, as a practicing journalist during the past several years, I can still come up with an objective assessment of the performance of elected provincial officials regardless of my personal and political attachment.
So far, so good. Early in his first term, governor Marquez set the motion for good housekeeping, keeping tight watch over the provincial finances, particularly collections from various local sources while balancing earnings as against expenditures to the dismay of various creditors who have to wait for a while for the settlement of their accounts payables. This included trimming the number of casual employees whose wages constituted a heavy toll on the provincial government’s income earnings.
The strategy paid off. A year later, the provincial government seemed to be fast becoming financially sound where accounts payable amounting to several millions had been fully settled. Statutory and contractual obligations were religiously paid. By the middle of this year, the P40 million bond floatation inked several years back had been fully redeemed. Equipment pool outstanding financial obligation will soon be fully repaid. The province’s counterpart fund in the P139 million loan for the upgrading of the provincial hospital had been cautiously raised resulting in the near completion of the new facilities of the Dr. Rafael S. Tumbokon Memorial Hospital. Had the Marquez – Tolentino administration defaulted in raising the provincial counterpart for the provincial hospital upgrading, the multi-million (peso) project could have turned out to be a giant "white elephant".
Because of the extraordinary good financial housekeeping, the Department of Finance has promptly upgraded the credit standing of the provincial government (Aklan) where it can be entrusted with financial loans from banking and financial institutions to the tune of not less than P250 million at one time. Banking institutions showed no hesitance in lending the provincial government hefty loans to finance the province’s rice hybridization program, and the hospital equipment upgrading program. The P40 million bond flotation for Boracay, Aklan had been adjudged as one of the few financial success stories of certain local government units and had been translated as a chapter of a book published for the purpose. Jetty ports and terminals collections had been drastically increasing, credit it to tight monitoring and the increase of tourist arrivals which transformed Aklan tourism into a P40 million industry in terms of tourism receipts annually.
Like the rice hybridization program, the Marquez-Tolentino administration ventured into another major innovation and bold initiative in local governance, the creation of the Economic Enterprise Development Department (EEDD) to cover hospital operations in the provincial hospital and the two district hospitals in Altavas and Ibajay, tourism facilities to include the jetty ports and terminals operations, small-scale mining and gravel and sand quarrying, the Provincial Engineer’s Office equipment pool, construction development of the engineering office, capitol grounds and facilities, and to include later the provincial academic center offering information technology courses and the school of nursing which has already opened this year.
The EEDD almost doubled the province’s annual budget from a little more than P300 million during the past several years to some P600 million starting this year with the EEDD accounting for almost P200 million.
The EEDD poses an acid test in the capability of the Marquez – Tolentino administration in local governance. Failure of the EEDD will spell of how well the duo perform in local governance. But as things are taking their respective directions in the EEDD, hopes are high it might succeed like the rice hybridization program which has almost doubled the yield per hectare of Aklan farmers and made Aklan known as the hybrid rice seed center in the Visayas region.
Like critical patients, hospital operations will spell the EEDD success, although, jetty port operations had been phenomenal in terms of collections. What is important is for the EEDD departments to come up with approximation of revenue generations as against budgetary appropriations. Revenue shortfalls will spell the doom for the EEDD. Hospital operations can earn. No doubt. Running it business-like will do the trick, although the provincial government under the Marquez – Tolentino administration has never abandoned its health indigency program.
Democracy is at work at the Aklan Sangguniang Panlalawigan where even board members-allies of the Marquez – Tolentino leadership openly criticize executive programs of the administration. Yet, it never failed to provide Marquez the necessary legislative infrastructure to make his administration work. /MP mailto:madyaas_pen@yahoo.com
The description maybe considered by readers as self-serving knowing fully well that this corner had actively participated in the campaign for Tibyog Akean candidates during the 2004 local elections as the head of its media bureau handling broadcast and print media propaganda. After the assumption of the new provincial leadership, Governor Carlito S. Marquez promptly picked me as Consultant for Media Affairs. In March last year, after the death of Mike Palomata, Secretary to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, Vice Governor Kel Tolentino appointed me as a replacement.
However, as a practicing journalist during the past several years, I can still come up with an objective assessment of the performance of elected provincial officials regardless of my personal and political attachment.
So far, so good. Early in his first term, governor Marquez set the motion for good housekeeping, keeping tight watch over the provincial finances, particularly collections from various local sources while balancing earnings as against expenditures to the dismay of various creditors who have to wait for a while for the settlement of their accounts payables. This included trimming the number of casual employees whose wages constituted a heavy toll on the provincial government’s income earnings.
The strategy paid off. A year later, the provincial government seemed to be fast becoming financially sound where accounts payable amounting to several millions had been fully settled. Statutory and contractual obligations were religiously paid. By the middle of this year, the P40 million bond floatation inked several years back had been fully redeemed. Equipment pool outstanding financial obligation will soon be fully repaid. The province’s counterpart fund in the P139 million loan for the upgrading of the provincial hospital had been cautiously raised resulting in the near completion of the new facilities of the Dr. Rafael S. Tumbokon Memorial Hospital. Had the Marquez – Tolentino administration defaulted in raising the provincial counterpart for the provincial hospital upgrading, the multi-million (peso) project could have turned out to be a giant "white elephant".
Because of the extraordinary good financial housekeeping, the Department of Finance has promptly upgraded the credit standing of the provincial government (Aklan) where it can be entrusted with financial loans from banking and financial institutions to the tune of not less than P250 million at one time. Banking institutions showed no hesitance in lending the provincial government hefty loans to finance the province’s rice hybridization program, and the hospital equipment upgrading program. The P40 million bond flotation for Boracay, Aklan had been adjudged as one of the few financial success stories of certain local government units and had been translated as a chapter of a book published for the purpose. Jetty ports and terminals collections had been drastically increasing, credit it to tight monitoring and the increase of tourist arrivals which transformed Aklan tourism into a P40 million industry in terms of tourism receipts annually.
Like the rice hybridization program, the Marquez-Tolentino administration ventured into another major innovation and bold initiative in local governance, the creation of the Economic Enterprise Development Department (EEDD) to cover hospital operations in the provincial hospital and the two district hospitals in Altavas and Ibajay, tourism facilities to include the jetty ports and terminals operations, small-scale mining and gravel and sand quarrying, the Provincial Engineer’s Office equipment pool, construction development of the engineering office, capitol grounds and facilities, and to include later the provincial academic center offering information technology courses and the school of nursing which has already opened this year.
The EEDD almost doubled the province’s annual budget from a little more than P300 million during the past several years to some P600 million starting this year with the EEDD accounting for almost P200 million.
The EEDD poses an acid test in the capability of the Marquez – Tolentino administration in local governance. Failure of the EEDD will spell of how well the duo perform in local governance. But as things are taking their respective directions in the EEDD, hopes are high it might succeed like the rice hybridization program which has almost doubled the yield per hectare of Aklan farmers and made Aklan known as the hybrid rice seed center in the Visayas region.
Like critical patients, hospital operations will spell the EEDD success, although, jetty port operations had been phenomenal in terms of collections. What is important is for the EEDD departments to come up with approximation of revenue generations as against budgetary appropriations. Revenue shortfalls will spell the doom for the EEDD. Hospital operations can earn. No doubt. Running it business-like will do the trick, although the provincial government under the Marquez – Tolentino administration has never abandoned its health indigency program.
Democracy is at work at the Aklan Sangguniang Panlalawigan where even board members-allies of the Marquez – Tolentino leadership openly criticize executive programs of the administration. Yet, it never failed to provide Marquez the necessary legislative infrastructure to make his administration work. /MP mailto:madyaas_pen@yahoo.com
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