Face-to-face With My Government

My first job was in 1975 as a Social Services Specialist in a newly reorganized national office. The Civil Service Commission referred me to the agency. They were efficient! Having graduated college from the UST with a major in Sociology, I never knew what kind of a job I could apply to, except that I could be a research encoder just like when I worked part time during senior year. For me, my first work was momentous - it gave me a wider perspective of the world that used to be just my room and our home in Project 6. Much more, or rather much less, than our snacks of cakes and meals of lechon kawali –cum- pinakbet. Bigger issues than what to wear on Sundays or where to hold my 18th birthday. I was thrown out into the world of the urban poor who barely make it to survive everyday. Into the reality that they can only choose to be hard headed because they can’t find the words to rebut and maybe fight for their rights to come to a compromise with a demolition team. And perhaps come to terms with life and its entirety. It was a major learning experience for me.

Later I was sent to a special project in Ilocos Norte. Hundreds of houses in five sitios (districts) were to be relocated initially to provide a security fence and preservation measures for the lake. Incidentally, the then President used to play in the area as a boy, and later as a place where he liked to spend his holidays. In the series of consultation among the local folks, we were first treated politely and asked the great question why. Next, the old fathers came and knelt before us and begged us to stop the project with tears on their faces. In the succeeding attempts, we were stoned in our vehicle on our way to community meetings. What to do? Our team leader had direct access to the President so after a consensus, she told him it had to be upgrading and not relocation, or he loses out team. We won. This time it was an eye-opener as much as a heart-breaker.

In another instance, I was sent with a multi disciplinary team to a big project, an international and much funded one. But truckloads of food for the beneficiaries didn’t turn out enough at times, and when they did they were not the foodstuff originally intended for consumption. There were talks of highway robbery and interception, though we never heard any official inquiry on them. There was a time when the recipients got tired of eating sardines they went out and bartered the stuff with the local people. One embarrassing incident was when a group head accidentally opened his briefcase during an inter agency meeting and revealed bundles of ripe bananas that looked exactly like those in the rations.

Since then I transferred from one agency to another, from government to non-government. I felt I had to find the reason to stay put and maybe make life easier for me. Why does one leave a good paying job? First I thought I wanted to pursue graduate education. Then maybe a better occupation could be waiting. Or I could do something else and be good at it, too. But it always boiled down to frustration at the thought that it would take great effort and a long time to change things that have become pervasive in our culture and have become part of what we are as a people – corruption. How do we fight it?