Former VP De Castro: Globe Asiatique in the clear, NO PHONY BORROWERS

And so, now it becomes apparent that Philippine Daily Inquirer TWISTED facts. What a SHAME!

Noli virtually clears Globe Asiatique in housing loan scam

(The Philippine Star) 

Updated September 07, 2010, 12:00 AM Comments (2)

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=609671&publicationSubCategoryId=66

MANILA, Philippines - Former Vice President Noli de Castro, who was former Housing and UrbanDevelopment Coordinating Council (HUDCC) chairman, has practically cleared Globe Asiatique Realty Holdings Corp. and blamed the Pampanga office of Pag-IBIG Fund for the alleged bogus loan borrowers.

De Castro, who was also former chairman of Pag-IBIG Fund (Home Development Mutual Fund), in a radio interview with dzRH’s, clarified there were no phony borrowers, but applicants who have not completed all the requirements but were qualified to get housing loans in Pampanga.

He said he ordered an investigation into this in Pag-IBIG Pampanga last March, noting that these applicants with incomplete papers might have availed themselves of loans for housing units in Pampanga not just of Globe Asiatique but also of other realty developers.

De Castro said the inquiry got nowhere because of the elections but he tried to keep in touch with officials of Pag-IBIG Fund about the problem even after the new administration took over.

He said that the problem might have arisen because of the directive of then President Arroyo to avoid red tape, resulting in the reduction and the loosening of requirements to avoid graft and corruption and fasttrack solution to the housing backlog.

De Castro volunteered to testify in the proposed House inquiry and to meet with Vice President Jojo Binay, the incumbent HUDCC chairman, so he can explain how one becomes a Pag-IBIG member, how one gets qualified to get housing loan, and how this problem could have arisen.

He noted that Globe Asiatique, just like any private national shelter partner, merely processes housing applications based on certification issued by Pag-IBIG Fund. In the case of Globe Asiatique, it has already built all the housing units using its own funds before they were sold to Pag-IBIG members.

De Castro said there were instances when some loan borrowers fail to pay their loan amortization but Pag-IBIG tried to understand their financial plight and made arrangements with the developers so that they were eventually settled.

He stressed that all housing developers issue a two-year buy-back guarantee, with Globe Asiatique even giving a five-year guarantee, making sure that the money of Pag-IBIG members and of the government is safe and protected.

De Castro said Pag-IBIG Fund has allowed the so-called non-formally employed, like the self-employed market vendors and the overseas workers, even during the time of President Ferdinand Marcos, but this was made into a law recently and is availed of, not just by Globe Asiatique, but also by other developers.

He decried the sensationalized media reports, which he said, will only destroy good working relations of Pag-IBIG Fund with housing developers, including Globe Asiatique, and this will cause a setback in the government’s effort to provide affordable housing.

Attacks on Dona Victorina continue! (UPDATED)

Being famous has its downside and the bloggers of Dona Victorina may be getting acquainted with the dark side of fame.

In its latest post, the Victorina Council writes that is continually being attacked and the objective of the attack may be to screw up the blogsite so that it doesn't appear on the internet anymore.

"the Victorina Council has reason to believe that the Magdalo group and/or their supporters have been trying to sabotage our blog using underhanded technology. Victorina strongly denounces this cowardly act and vehemently denies any insinuation that these are provoked attacks."

Countermeasures are now being deployed to stop these attacks but what is worrisome is the possibility that the attacks may migrate from cyberspace to real life.

Will the members of the Victorina Council be subjected to threats of bodily harm? I hope not.

Anyway, the attacks haven't been limited to Victorina.

Even Pinoy Buzz was subjected to a DOS or Ping Bomb attack, making it difficult for me to log on the internet.

Then there were three instances when my Motigo vist counter logged over a thousand page views from a single IP address. My google analytics also registered the same event.

You see, one way to get keep people from viewing a website is to deploy a program that repeatedly downloads or accesses the webpage at a very fast rate. What happens is that the server which hosts the website becomes so flooded with download or access requests that it exceeds its bandwidth allocation and when this happens, the website returns a 404 message when accessed by other users.

I don't know if this was the actual technique deployed on Pinoy Buzz, but it sure did look like it.

Oddly, these "page view" spikes occurred after I posted the entry "Querubin's minions hack Dona Victorina blog" on June 22. My counters registered a spike on June 30 (1,503) and July 6 (1,890), there were at least three IP addresses that was recorded as doing most of the pageviews and two were located in Singapore while the third was located in Dubai.

Another "page view" more recently on July 20 with 1,412 pageviews after I posted the entries "Querubin writes to Pinoy Buzz" on July 10 and "Colonel Querubin's crusade against Dona Victorina" on July 13.

I have to admit that much of what I am saying is circumstantial and I have some doubt that ranking as well as bemedalled soldiers will actually waste their time trying to destroy my blog.

The thing is, Pinoy Buzz is a free-blog and I haven't gotten around to actually buying a domain name or leasing server space. If they do manage to destroy it, I have six other blogs that I can use to get back at them.

Then again, it would really be a bad thing if Querubin was really behind the attacks on Victorina and Pinoy Buzz. One wonders how he'd handle a Senate interpellation where his views are thoroughly taken apart and proven to be of marginal value. I wonder if we'll actually see our senate erupt in a brawl such as what happened in Taiwan or South Korea.

Paano na lang kung pikunin siya ni Pimentel or ni Joker Arroyo, baka makipag-suntukan pa sa mga matanda. Nakakahiya naman!

Of course, I always entertain the idea that I can be wrong about Querubin.

New tourism bill gives hope to preservation of Boracay

I just got word that Dona Victorina's blogger encounter in Boracay was an unqualified success. I have yet to hear directly from Rain B and Attorney Trixie, but indirectly, I gathered that some 30 bloggers showed up.

The only thing better than 30 bloggers showing up is if I was the thirty-first blogger to sign in. Sadly, though, I couldn't afford to go to Boracay.

In their campaign to help save Boracay for future beach lovers, I tried to clue Rain and Trixie in on provisions in the yet to be signed Tourism Act of 2009 that would put a stop to the environmental degradation being experienced in Boracay. I am not sure if they discussed this and so, here's a brief explanation of the relevant provisions.

I really don't have a bead on what exactly is happening Boracay but I have a suspicion that the crux of the problem may be regulation or the lack of it.

As can be expected in any part of the Philippines, once a certain type of business booms we can expect everyone with the capital and a little know-how to go into that same business.

There was a time when this was referred to as the 'lechon manok mentality' -- where lechon manok became all the rage and everyone got into the lechon manok business. Soon there were lechon manok grills on every street corner all over Metro Manila. This resulted in a glut and eventually, only those with big capitals survived the very tight competition environment.

Today, I'd like to compare what is happening to Boracay to a TODA (Tricycle Operator Driver Association) mentality in reference to how local governments are prone to relaxing regulation on businesses that are booming without regard for the impact it may have on the environment.

I would like to refer to it as the TODA mentality because in the last few years, the prices of tricycles have gone down and a lot of financing plans have made it affordable to get into the tricycle business.

This eventually led to a situation wherein almost every street corner in Metro Manila has a TODA. Because of their noisy two stroke engines, neighborhoods in Metro Manila have begun to experience a rise in air pollution and noise pollution. This is not to mention the hazards of kids being run over or rammed by speeding tricycles or the rise of tricycle riding drug dealers and robbers.

In Balic-Balic, Manila where I live, there are atleast seveb TODAs servicing the same route which is less than 2 kilometers long. The biggest one is the Welcome TODA which has over 200 members and the smallest one is a bunch of unfranchised tricycle drivers who claim they are a TODA.

The rise in the number of TODAs began during the term of Manila Mayor and now DENR Secretary Lito Atienza. His successor, former Manila Mayor turned Senator turned Mayor Alfredo Lim allowed the TODAs to flourish even further.

Both mayors have refused to regulate the surge in the number of TODAs. On one hand, their defense would be that the City Mayor's office has stopped granting permits and licenses to TODA or tricycle operators. On the other, they do nothing to monitor and apprehend illegal tricycle operators -- saying that there are just too many of them.

And more to the point, I think that Mayors Atienza and Lim are averse to cracking down on TODAs for the simple reason that these are their voters.

While certainly not for the same reasons, Boracay has become one crowded and pollution causing TODA. Despite the best efforts of the tourism businesses that operate in Boracay, the environmental impact of their operations have begun to strain the island's eco-system.

A few years back, chloroform was found in its waters, a sign that raw sewerage has begun to seep to the sea -- till this day, I am not aware if the resorts operation in Boracay have adequate sewerage treatment facilities. Apart from the chloroform, there is also the noise pollution and the impact of so many motorized boats thrashing its waters.

In anycase, the local government with jurisdiction over Boracay has scarcely put a stop to the mushrooming of more resorts. More resorts mean more revenues and who'd want to put a stop to that if you are a mayor?

What the mayor doesn't understand or refuses to understand is perhaps all the good that Boracay is right now, will eventually come to an abrupt halt if regulation is not enforced.

What will aid in the preservation of Boracay and continued profitability is adequate regulation, not by the local government, but by a Tourism industry big brother to be created by the Tourism Act of 2009. What the tourism big brother, or properly called the TIEZA (Tourism Industry Enterprise Zone Authority) will do is to develop and implement a Zone development plan with the tourism stakeholders and the local government. The zone development plan takes into account environmental conservation measures and the TIEZA is empowered to sanction those who violate these measures.

What this means is that Local Governments will be compelled to regulate the development of tourism businesses in their jurisdiction to prevent the over crowding of such establishments. This means better profits for the businesses and better revenues for the government and also, a longer life span for the tourism destination.

Dona Victorina's Blogger Encounter at Boracay Mandarin starts today!

Top Philippine bloggers of Dona Victorina together with Boracay Forever Movement will be in full force at the Boracay Mandarin starting today.

Atty. Trixie Angeles will handle a forum on Environmental Laws Affecting Boracay and perhaps much will be explained about whether these laws are being enforced adequately or if the laws are inadequate.

I might be able to join the discussion via Skype or YM (as spindroid) later. Hopefully, I can discuss organization of a new group of volunteers out to save the planet earth.

Basically, what the group proposes to do is to viralize behaviour that will in the end help clean up the mess we've made.

We're not going to do anything new, but we are going to do things much more differently.

I think the challenge, really, with spreading environmental awareness is that you basically have to get the urban bred young masa to adopt practices that will not only benefit the environment but also give them livelihood.

If you're at all interested in helping save the planet or at least Boracay, do join. You can contact 332.10.31 local 107 or text 09209026583 for details.