A Cebu rural bank, victim of scam artists?

I couldn’t help but notice the column in The Philippine Star dubbed “Takin’ Care of Business” of my Brod Babes Romualdez last Feb.10th on his expose about a housing scam that victimized Philippine Ambassador to Chile Consuelo “Baby” Puyat wherein she arrived back home to the Philippines only to find out that her house in Dasmariñas Village had been sold for P25 million without her knowledge by a man named Gregorio Co. The innocent buyer in good faith was Benny Soliven (a nephew of Sir Max Soliven) who was equally shocked when Puyat went home to her now sold house.

While this is good tsismis for us, I really don’t write “tsismis” columns. But what got my attention was what Babes wrote and allow me to extract a quote from his column last Monday.

“A big question now is, who is Gregorio Co? Is he part of a syndicate specializing in fake property titles operating all over the country? Just a few days ago, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) nabbed a mother and daughter team who tried to obtain a P5 million loan from a Cebu-based financing company. The women are believed to be part of a group selling or mortgaging fake land titles in an upscale subdivision in Cebu. The mother posed as the doctor who owned the piece of property but an employee of the Register of Deeds who know the real owner alerted the NBI about the impostors. Prior to that, the women have been able to mortgage a three-hectare property for P2 million at a rural bank in Cebu.

Now for the million-peso question… which Rural Bank was victimized by these scam artists? I texted my Brod Babes if it was one of the Rural Banks belonging to the Legacy Group and he said no. But when I texted him whether it was the Rural Bank of Subangdaku (RBS) he texted back, “It sounds like that one!” This brings us to the next question, “Is this the “fictitious loan” that allegedly brought the RBS to collapse? Perhaps we should ask again Mrs. Paz Radaza to shed light into the RBS mess. What if it was not the RBS? Which Rural Bank here did scam artists victimize?

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Talking about being curious; I’m really curious about that “wanted” sign for nurses hung over the gates of Malacañang Palace, which was announced by Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA). It is really true that there are thousands of nurses who’ve graduated in the various nursing schools over the country, but couldn’t land a job abroad because of the global financial crisis or like in the US where they are in “retrogression.” My daughter Katrina is one of those nurses, whose future we thought was bright when, after taking the NCLEX, she only ended with promises from various job placement agencies that seek out nurses for jobs abroad.

But instead of work in a Call Center, which is undoubtedly a very well-paying job for this country, we enrolled her in a culinary school in Quezon City, after all, cooking is her first love. But what about her classmates who cannot afford to enroll her in another course? They are the ones lining up for those 50,000 jobs that the President just announced.

This program, according to the President, is dubbed “Nurses Assigned in the Rural Areas (NARS)” where they will be sent to the 1,000 poorest towns all over the country. What I would like to know is, what’s the mechanics behind the NARS program? Sending nurses to the 1,000 poorest towns that may not even have a health center much less a clinic maybe a foolhardy idea. It is easy to come up with ideas purportedly to solve our huge job problems, but the applicants should know what they are getting into.

Another 50,000 jobs are needed in supposedly “energy independence and environment jobs” which once again needs more explanation to what kinds of job this would entail? I submit that I wouldn’t want to be in the President’s shoe at this time (lest, it might be thrown back at me!) because finding jobs for people where there are no jobs available isn’t really an easy task. But since the President is embarking on something new, therefore, she must explain this further to those interested parties.

But we can learn much by looking back at the history of the depression in the 30’s, when then Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave jobs to the jobless Americans by building new roads. In the same breath, that’s exactly what newly-installed Fuehrer Adolf Hitler did when he took over the remnants of the Weimar Republic, by constructing the first Autobahn, Germany’s first freeway. When he was criticized for building a road that none one could use, he then turned to his friend Ferdinand Porsche to build him the People’s Car, which became the venerable Volkswagen! This should be the road map for Pres. Arroyo that a massive infrastructure program that can start as soon as possible is one quick fix to get people back to work!