Saturday, August 09, 2008 Speak out: Silicon Valley or silly con game? By Efrain T. Pelaez Jr.
IT looks like Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza’s P10-billion dream reclamation project is dead in the water.
At least for now.
The Regional Development Council (RDC) voted almost unanimously to deflate that onerous and foul smelling hot air balloon.
Radaza should have gotten the hint.
Last week, President Arroyo told him to shut up halfway through his speech about his visions of a Silicon Valley.
The final blow came when his faithful factotum was not allowed to present another audio-visual presentation that the spin doctors labored all night to produce to convince the RDC that this reclamation project will propel Lapu-Lapu City full speed through the information highway into the future.
It has been a whirlwind month for Radaza.
Egged on by his new image consultant to come out of his hole, he actually started to believe his “Paguapo ni Pugapo” program was working.
Newspapers were splattered with colored pictures of him, perfumed and in his sartorial best, giving awards to clueless investors and taxpayers.
Dazed foreigners and reluctant guests were photographed and widely quoted.
We even saw him dancing at the Shang!
On some days, he even had more pictures, editorials and news coverage than GMA, Tom, Gwen, Jonas, Pabling, Raul and Inday Nerry combined!
Never mind that he forgot his speech at the Shangrila pasalamat shindig, or that hardly anybody showed up at his party.
Colored pictures and all smiles pa gihapon.
I am still in awe at how they came up with their convoluted logic, ideas and propaganda:
Example No. 1: The reclamation will transform Lapu-Lapu City into Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley has been on the island for the last 20 years or so.
It is under the jurisdiction of Peza!
There are three Peza zones and several Peza registered IT parks/buildings.
A number of the world’s leading technology innovators like Timex, Lexmark, Fairchild, Celestica, Teradyne, and dozens like them are already there.
Peza and its locators have been there successfully boosting jobs and training a skilled IT workforce for a generation.
Radaza and his group have absolutely nothing to do with this effort.
In fact, he is at war with Peza over taxes.
But he still awards its locators for being the biggest taxpayers of the city.
Isn’t that silly?
So all we have to do is create more Peza zones on the island!
There is no shortage of undeveloped land in Mactan, with over 6,000 hectares.
If somebody is itching to do a B-O-T scheme for the reclamation, send him to Peza to do a private estate like Aboitiz Land’s MEZ 2 which is brimming with activity.
Why create land from the sea when you have it already?
Even MEZ at the Cebu Light Industrial Park still has space.
Out of the 20 top taxpayers of the city that received awards from Radaza, most were from Peza and, the others were the hotels, the flour mill and utility company, that have all been in business for a long time.
So who needs those preferred consultants, contractors, anapog suppliers and scam artists who are salivating at the reclamation project and who have already charged taxpayers P20 million in consultancy fees?
Example No. 2- Radaza and his wife claim that the 470 computers given to the schoolchildren of Lapu-Lapu City are preparing them for an IT future that will provide the workforce for the envisioned Silicon Valley.
Better call it Silly Scam City instead.
If that was so, then how come his Technical Working Group and Bids and Awards Committee overpriced the computers in the first place?
Did they not read the newspapers and see the ads of all the established computer retailers in Cebu that widely advertised
prices of these computers at between P17,000 to P19,000?
Or check prices and compare offers?
Or exercise frugal and reasonable judgment to safeguard public funds?
At P17,000 per Celeron computer, the city could have bought over 1,400 computers instead of the 470 purchased, and propelled three times more students into a computer literate future.
The computer scam is a scam!
Somebody made almost P15 million in the process!
This is equivalent to 15 brand new Camrys and Fortuners.
