Entrepreneurial Farmer

Ambrosio R. Villorente

Red Cross Is For All

I like to share this message to our readers. This is presented to the graduates of the Com-munity Based Disaster Management Training participants sponsored by the PNRC, Aklan chapter held at Sampaguita Garden, New Washington, Aklan on May 25 -30, and June 1-6, 2009.

May I congratulate the Philippine National Red Cross, (PNRC) Aklan chapter for initiating this Community Based Disaster Management Training. This is an act of generosity to share knowledge and skills for the mitigation of the effects of any disaster and catastrophe that might happen to us and other people. Man and nature cause catastrophe like fire, thunder and lightning, the bad results of which can be diminished with your knowledge and skills gained in this study. Thank you to the PNRC Aklan Chapter. Thank you to the International Federation of the Red Cross for financing the training.

I gladly recognize and extend my appreciation and sincere thanks to the resource persons for imparting their lifetime accumulated information, ideas, knowledge, and skills of their respective expertise.

Ideas, knowledge and skills need to be transmitted to other people for their application and use. Viable ideas and information must be rapidly spread and utilized. If not, it will be buried with the possessors to the grave when they die. Owners of bright ideas, practices and knowledge must share it to other people for their own uses and advantage. They must be spread widely for utilization and improvement.

Unlike money, ideas, information, knowledge, and skills become useless when the possessor dies for these will be buried with them to the grave. A man who possesses money and other vast resources in his lifetime will leave his amazed wealth to heirs and other people to enjoy. Excellent when being enjoyed, but worst if they quarrel on it.

I therefore commend and congratulate the PNRC Aklan under the leadership of Ms. Arcely Pelayo for organizing and implementing this training on Community Based Disaster Management.

Above all, I strongly congratulate the partici-pants for their attendance and active participation in this training. Your knowledge and skills gained will be all yours. Your knowledge on disaster preparedness, hazard assessment, its cycle, first aid among other information gained in these five days teaching-learning processes are all yours. Nobody can get it from you unless trans-mitted to others and utilized. It is you and you alone who can use it to save life and property.

Today, you are the trustees of these useful knowledge and skills applicable in the mitigation of the effects of any disaster. This is the beauty of being a volunteer to PNRC. You are the beneficiaries of this training program. You are ever ready to apply this knowledge first to you, to the members of the family and then to the community.

"Charity begins at home" therefore I expect you to benefit the best of your training. How can you help others without helping first yourself? I just like to remind you to be of "Service Above Self".

Red Cross has no boundary be it political, gender, color, economic status. Red Cross is for all.

LOSSES at Akelco

Reading the Akelco Statements of Financial Condition as of December 31, 2008 is puzzling.

While Akelco’s volume of sales for 2008 was valued at P830,853,881, Akelco spent P957,351,991. If the expenses is subtracted from income, Akelco lost P126,498,110 in its operation in 2008. In 2007, Akelco sold electric power valued at P827,236,184 but spent P898,225,934 or lost of P72,989,750 in operation. For the last two years of operation, Akelco lost P199,487,860.

How can Akelco lost that much when it collected 99.16 percent of the total sales and reduced the systems loss to 12 percent?

I examined the Akelco annual report in search for good reason for losing by the millions. I found none. There is no analysis given. How can management strengthen the weaknesses of the operation if its financial situation is not studied, and analyzed? How can management improve its operation when there is no study and analysis of findings, con-clusion and recommen-dations presented?

Moreover, the accumulated losses as of Dec. 31, 2008 was P659,231,574. Where will Akelco get the amount to cover the losses?

For one thing, Akelco’s current assets total P495,496,519. However, its liabilities is also of equal amount. With this financial condition, Akelco is always "gina ga-id sa utang" (tied in huge debt). /MP