Aug
Written by By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.
WITH half of the P196 million-plus paid recently by Mirant Philippines to the Province of Pangasinan for its overdue real property tax going to the Special Education Fund, to be divided thereafter between the provincial government and Sual municipal government for their own special education needs, expect more schoolbuildings to be built, more school equipment and supplies purchased and unpaid assorted school hired hands finally getting their manna after a long spell.
Over two years since Mirant Philippines, operator of the Sual Coal-Fired Power Plant, stopped paying its tax to the province, the education picture in the province went from bad to worse. Some public schools had to scrap student athletic programs, downgrade academic competitions and temporarily abandon even their little “ambitious” computer education programs. They simply had no choice – there was just nothing more but crumbs coming in from higher provincial authorities to support such programs.
Many schools that had embarked on initial computer familiarization programs for the faculty and the young learners had to backpedal if not completely stop their efforts to “extend the classroom to the world beyond thru cyberspace” – all for dire lack of resources to buy softwares or maintain the hardwares they had somehow procured earlier thru the benevolence of their schoolboards, their congressmen, or the Office of the Governor.
In short, Mirant’s little act of “delinquency,” had far-reaching implication to the education sector in the province. Outside of the Internal Revenue Allotment, there was no denying the fact that the Mirant tax breathed much life to an otherwise cash-problematic local government.
To Mirant’s credit, it showed true corporate responsibility by finally paying up after apparently realizing the grave implications of its drawn-out legal arguments with the provincial government. After all, given the circumstances for which the tax was programmed to be spent, prolonging the fight was not actually hurting its legal adversary but the young and bright-eyed schoolchildren instead whose growth and development was being compromised over a highly convoluted tax technicality.
On a lighter vein, that’s also probably why, in this anniversary issue of the Pangasinan Star – noticed the thicker pages?—we were lucky enough to have a one-fourth page ad earlier texted to us by good friend Ruel Camba, the provincial information officer, suddenly “upgraded” to a half-page one when our staff came to pick it up at Urduja House last Thursday. Wonders never cease, see!
Thanks, Guv! Thanks, Mirant!
SAID AND DONE: We’ve kept our self pretty much from browsing thru the Internet in the past seeing as how, with its varied amusing sites, we’d probably spend more and more time before the pc than we should. That is, we had better time to do with our life than sit there staring at the screen most hours of the day… But exec ed Ging Cardinoza’s highly engaging way of presenting the wonders of the Net for our paper the past couple of months, especially thru the blogspot, has hooked us. You might say, we’re blazing some trails and thrilled by the uh, cyberspace response… There’s one chap (we feel it’s the same person even if he logs in as “Anonymous” in his comments to our blog items) who calls everything he doesn’t like (the Star’s “activitism”, BSL’s “resign” call to GMA, Susan Roces’ visit to Pangasinan) as “garbage.” He keeps coming back, filling up our e-mail with his pieces after each update of our blogsite. How he must love the garbage! Wait till he reads fellow columnist DOS below us writing about, uh, more garbage.
