Jalilo Dela Torre 3 hrs · OFW CARLOS ASUNCION Sta Catalina, Ilocos Sur Chemical Engineer, Saudi Arabia, 1980-1993 Municipal Mayor, Sta Catalina, Ilocos Sur Owner, Pawnshop Chain, Commercial Building Investor, Hospitals “Poverty Is Not a Hindrance” J. Dela Torre Sta. Catalina is a short 3 km jump from Vigan, one of those small towns in the Philippines which have preserved their own identity and culture, despite the suffocating development and urbanization inroads from a nearby metropolis. Many of their residents would be from other nearby towns and provinces whose work in the city center has made them look elsewhere for shelter because accommodation in the city is either unavailable or too expensive. Talisay and Consolacion in Cebu; Carmen of Davao del Norte; Sta. Cruz of Davao del Sur; Opol and Tagoloan in Misamis Oriental; Oton and Pavia in Iloilo—are just a few examples. Sta. Catalina was named after St. Catherine of Alexandria, who is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers venerated for their miraculous powers against specific ailments. St. Catherine of Alexandria has an elevated status because her name was mentioned by St. Joan of Arc as having spoken to her. Historical accounts attribute the naming of this town to an apparition of St. Catherine when a member of a Spanish exploratory expedition sent by Juan Salcedo from Vigan saw her image after drinking from a spring. The official development title of Sta. Catalina is “Vegetable Bowl of the North”, which is reflective of the fresh produce harvested out of 1,150 hectares planted to onions, cabbage, cauliflower, sweet pepper, eggplant, beans, tomato, sweet potato, yam, beans, mongo and peanut. The total economic value of the vegetable production is Php523.04 million, per the town’s official website, but it doesn’t say as of when. After an early start from San Fernando, La Union, we drove smack into crawling traffic in Vigan. The city has taken to making many roads one-way and navigating around town for a newbie can be a real challenge. We had not been on the road from Vigan more than 3 minutes when the driver made an abrupt stop and parked in front of an old brick building. Where are we? I asked. We’re here, Sir, answered Ethel Saliendra, NRCO Cordinator for Region 1, and my girl Friday for this stint. I turned and there it was, the municipal building itself, right on a sharp corner of the highway between Vigan and Sta Catalina, and fronting the municipal auditorium. It’d be a shame to demolish this building, I thought, when infrastructure needs dictate that the highway be widened. We were met at the entrance by the PESO Manager, Leobert Plana, who ushered us into the second-floor office of Mayor Carlos Asuncion, ex-OFW from the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, working for Saudi Aramco. The mayor’s welcome was effusive and deferential. I need to break the ice, I thought. I’m always uncomfortable when local government officials go over the top in welcoming guests, but I deferred judgment because it might be the Ilocano way of making guests comfortable. Ilocanos are reputed to be very particular about respecting old people and guests. My fears were unfounded. As soon as the mayor began his narrative, the walls came crumbling down. He was as warm and as open as the hot and humid climate of the Ilocos. Mayor Carlos R. Asuncion projected an image of informality. He wore a light blue sports shirt and spoke with an air of self-deprecation. He even offered to remove his imposing marble name plate off the table, perhaps as a gesture to make the interview as uninhibited as possible. On his left were images of the Holy Child and St. Catherine of the Broken Wheel, or St. Catherine of Alexandria. He was balding, the few tufts of hair remaining at both sides of his head greying, and his complexion of the dark brown hue common among people in the north. His baritone voice was clear, unequivocal and authoritative. He could make a good radio announcer with a voice like his, I mused. “I’m presently the mayor of this humble town of Sta. Catalina. I’m currently on my third term as mayor, and I began my political career in 1995,” he began with two succinct and powerful sentences. Born to farmer parents in Cabittaogan, Sta. Catalina, he finished his Chemical Engineering degree in 1973 at the Mapua Institute of Technology, one of the best engineering schools in the country. College tuition fees being what they were, his parents worked double time to get Carlos and his siblings through. Her mother had to resort to selling off some of their properties to meet the financial challenge. Carlos himself did errands for people he knew to earn pocket money, and sold empty gin bottles discarded by his booze-loving dorm mates, to be able to pay his jeepney fare. In his high school days, when the peace and order situation in Vigan was perilous, he just hiked the 7 km distance from his school to home, vulnerable to criminal and joy-riding gangs, because the calesa drivers were too scared to ply their horse-driven carriages after four in the afternoon. On the months of December and January, he braved the cold nights walking home. But he took every challenge in stride, and managed to finish his degree, not with flying colors, he hastened to add. “I was just an average student, but I did pass the board exams for chemical engineers the very next year I graduated,” his eyes lit up in pride at his achievement, despite the limitations. “I went home to Sta. Catalina and worked with my uncle, who was a distributor of agricultural pesticides for a multi-national company.” It was this same uncle, a three-termer as mayor in the same town, who promoted Carlos’ political career. Carlos himself was not too keen about joining politics; he’d rather be tending his farm, he said, and putting up small businesses in his town. “I guess it was destiny,” he explained. He first ran as municipal councilor and lost. He won and was re-elected in his next two attempts, but when he ran as mayor, he lost again. Undaunted, in 2007, he finally won and was reelected in 2010 and 2013. From his “Katas Saudi Arabia” he was able to send all his brothers and sisters to school and all his children. They are all college graduates and are now all gainfully employed and practicing their professions, he said. He then rattled off the names, locations and professionals of all his siblings, who he was proud to say, all had their beginnings from me. One is in the US, another in Canada, and the third one in Italy. A nephew is coming home to become Yahoo Philippines manager. “My father was not one to employ violence to impose discipline, but we could sense it when he was angry or disappointed about something, so we made the necessary corrections in our behavior ourselves,” Carlos offered as explanation where he inherited his discipline in life. “My mother on the other hand was a very religious person. We never fought among ourselves or badmouthed any brother or sister in the presence of our father. The only time we raised our voice was not in anger but to stress a point during arguments.” Borne out of this family solidarity, Carlos leveraged his savings from his decent-paying job in Saudi to support all his siblings and his own children’s education and careers. His eldest, Leslie, is a cardio-vascular surgeon practicing in the province, and a registered nurse. The second, Benedict, helps Carlos with his businesses, while the third, Agatha, has just finished her Business Management degree. In 1980, there was a massive recruitment for skilled and professional manpower for the Middle East. He tried his luck and was hired as Corrosion Control Engineer for the Shedgum Gas Plant of Saudi Aramco, a natural gas plant serving the Ghawar oil fields, the biggest oil reserve in the world with 70 billion barrels. There are unproven claims that the major oil fields of Saudi Arabia in the eastern province have been seriously damaged by the practice of seawater injection to force oil to the surface. When Carlos flew to Saudi, his wife, Flora, was heavy with their second child. ACC Shedgum was virtually a polyglot mini-city, with 60 different nationalities from Europe to the Americas to Asia and Africa all working for the giant Saudi Arabian oil company and all seeking the mighty dollar. They had five movie theatres, five dining halls and wet markets, feeding and entertaining a small army of workers numbering more than 20,000. For managers or professionals in Carlos’ position or equivalent, they had single airconditioned rooms, use of any sports facilities and equipment, laundry, and of course food—all provided free by the company. He overcame his biggest nemesis—loneliness and its cousin, boredom—by becoming a prolific letter-writer to his wife, at least 160 letters a year, or roughly once every other day. There were no mobile phones, no internet, then, so how was one to articulate his thoughts and his love for his wife? He devised a tracking system to monitor his wife’s receipt of his letters to avoid repeating what he’d said in the earlier letter. He serialized his letters, and recorded the mailing on the calendar provided by the company. Upon receipt of his wife’s confirmation that she has received letter numbered so and so, he would cross it out from the calendar. Supplementing the letters were voice tapes for when he really needed to be reminded of how his wife’s voice sounded. Did he have problems with other nationalities? “Believe it or not,” he draw closer to the interviewer, “it’s actually my fellow Filipino workers who gave me problems. Crab mentality in action, you know.” Prodded to be less cryptic, he explains further: “Halimbawa, may attrition plan ang kompanya para sa limang positions, at 10 pa kami, e, hindi mo maiiwasan, may sipsipang mangyayari diyan. May laglagan.” But he refused to be drawn into the petty internecine struggles for position, and now, he says all his former detractors have become his friends, and they continue to see each other. Even his Saudi trainees who were under his tutelage, some of whom had become managers and superintendents, continue to communicate with him. To earn extra bucks, he signed up for the volunteer fire brigade, which put SR1,600 a month into his pocket. He also took advantage of every opportunity for overtime work. As early as 1983, three years after starting in Saudi, he had already built his home in Sta. Catalina. In 1986, he had already made his first investment in a 20-ha agricultural property, which he planted to vegetables. In 1993, he decided to call it quits. His son was entering the seminary and the family needed a father figure, so he packed his bags and said goodbye to his well-paying job in Saudi. After his return, he was happy with his 20-hectare high-value vegetable farm, and had not entertained serious thoughts about going into business full time. A neighbor goaded him to try the pawnshop business because the community needed a better alternative to Indian micro-financing. He was reticent because though he was a chemical engineer and therefore knew something about precious metals, he was not too familiar with the business side of it. In early 1994, he came across a newspaper ad announcing a Central Bank seminar on pawnshop operations and jewelry appraisal. This must be a sign from above, he thought, and attended. On the same year he opened his first pawnshop in Vigan, and the following two years, another in Vigan and the third one in Narvacan. Whatever profit he made from his pawnshops, he invested in other businesses, like prime real property in the Metro Vigan area, and he acquired an interest in the Metro Vigan Hospital, as well as in some restaurants and in printing. All told, his net worth is now conservatively put at P27 million and growing. This is indeed a far cry from his college days when he sold empty gin bottles for fare money. He was upfront about his financial worth in the SALN because he didn’t want the people of Sta. Catalina to think that he had enriched himself in power. In fact, he said he’d lost business opportunities after he became mayor. But it’s time to give back, he said. “I became mayor, not because I wanted to entrench myself in power, but more because I want to serve the people of Sta. Catalina.” Carlos didn’t sound preachy at all. What advice could he give to OFWs or those planning to go abroad for employment? “Para doon sa mga OFW na andoon pa, or nagpaplano pa lang na umalis, kailangan may plano kayo. Whether or not the plan is how much to save, or where or how much to invest. Huwag unahin ang luho sa buhay. Do not assume that your job will be permanent abroad, and that you will continue to enjoy the same stream of money. Look at what happened to our workers in Libya. Maganda nga ang trabaho nila doon, at malalaki nga ang suweldo nila doon, pero ano ang nangyari? Hindi naman nila kagustuhan ang magkagiyera, pero nangyari ang hindi inaasahan, at napunta sa wala ang kanilang mga pangarap. Always keep something for yourself. Huwag lahat ipadala sa pamilya at mga kamag-anak. Laging isipin na hindi ka magtatrabaho sa labas habang buhay. When you settle down here, and decide to go into business, dapat pag-isipang mabuti kung anong negosyo ang papasukan. If you have to start a new business, choose the one which is not yet taken by other businessmen, or one which is needed in the community. For example, before I engaged in the pawnshop business, people in the community were not very happy about the micro-finance business of the motorcycle-riding Indians, which lent at 20% interest a month.” So, he thought of a business which would allow people to borrow money at a much lower interest of 5% a month. It was a hit. People came in droves, and those chafing from the usurious loans from the Indians came to the pawnshop instead. But it was so successful he almost became a victim of his own success: he ran out of capital in the first five months of operation. In a pawnshop start-up, you need to have plenty of money to lend because the period of redemption or when you can recover the loans is five months ahead. He mortgaged his house and borrowed money from his 6 brothers-in-law working in Italy. That brought him over the hump, and in a short time, he had recouped his capital and began making money. As soon as he made a profit from his pawnshop operations, he invested in real properties. What was his biggest business challenge? “It was when my pawnshop was robbed in 2006. They used an acetylene torch to cut through the vault,” he took a deep breath before answering. “No insurance?” I asked, rather vacuously. “In the pawnshop business, there is no such thing as insurance for the pledged properties. You can insure the place, or the shop itself, but not the pledged items,” he explained. I was incredulous. “So, how much did you lose?” I pressed. “I lost more than P10 million,” his countenance became serious, and the silence which followed was palpable. “I followed all the requirements as far as security is concerned: I had a strong vault, I hired a security guard, but there was no security against your own security guard becoming party to the robbery. It was an inside job.” “The case is still ongoing, but I have no hope that I can recover what I have lost,” the mayor-cum-businessman was dejected, and somehow irked that he had to relive a painful episode in his life all over again. “We were devastated, and I had to start from scratch all over again. I bought jewelry worth P5 million from a friend of mine in Laoag who had also a pawnshop business, so our customers who wanted to swap their lost items with equivalent jewelry can do so. This is what I mean when I said that an OFW who plans to go into a business for the first time should study and learn everything about the business. In my case, I could have been more discreet in the choice of security guards. I could’ve made sure that the vault was strong enough to withstand an acetylene torch. But everything is in hindsight, so I learned my lesson the hard way. But in due time, I had recovered my losses, and I had now installed all the latest security measures in all my pawnshops.” Was there one among the Fourteen Holy Helpers to whom he could have asked for help? I’ve browsed through the ailments against which each one of the Helpers could be prayed for, but there was none against a security guard going rogue. St. Catherine herself was prayed to against sudden death. Any final word? Mayor Asuncion breathed deeply, and looked straight into my eyes: “Yes, please tell all our OFWs. Poverty is not a hindrance.” In 2012, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration feted Mayor Carlos Asuncion as a national winner of the MOFYA, a yearly competition to recognize and award outstanding achievements in business, government service or civil society by OFWs. He’s paid it forward too. As of 2012, the Asuncion family has already financed through a scholarship program the college education of some 36 men and women from Sta. Catalina, who have become professionals or responsible members of the community.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 08:47:21 +0000