Filipinos admire Jose de Venecia as five-time Speaker. Few know that he pioneered Filipino overseas contracting and employment.
It was 1977. The Middle East was booming in construction. JDV was vying against a big US constructor for new piers in Jeddah. Saudi Arabian authorities had set a test: first of the two competitors to start work will bag all future projects.
JDV’s company Landoil had no experience in building ports. But it was expert drilling oil in the United Arab Emirates. JDV needed to beat the Americans to the draw.
He bought and refitted the old German cruise ship Bremen moored in Piraeus near Athens. Swiftly he assembled 3,000 Filipino engineers and craftsmen, and flew them to Greece. From there, the shipload of Filipinos was towed to the Red Sea.
Sail time should’ve taken only 12 days, but the towboat was slow. Short of cash for toll, Bremen, renamed Saudiphil-I, was detained for three days at the Suez Canal.
By the time JDV’s ship arrived in Jeddah on Nov. 1, the American workers were already there. Flying straight across the Atlantic, they had beaten JDV by a two-week head start.
But the Americans were busy erecting first their field offices, quarters, canteens, latrines. Whereas Saudiphil-I merely berthed, then disgorged 3,000 welders, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters and technicians, ready to construct the needed additional piers.
Saudi officials were impressed. JDV’s crew didn’t need to build a work camp. Saudiphil-I was already it. The Americans realized they had lost. Thence, Landoil bagged more construction projects: highways, waterworks, government centers and middle-class housing.
Landoil wasn’t into labor recruiting but overseas contracting. Employing 51,000 at its peak, its name became synonymous with large-scale employment of Filipinos for high-paying overseas jobs.
From Landoil’s operations was coined the term “overseas contract worker,” later “overseas Filipino worker.” Soon, Manila would field two million Filipinos to the Middle East, mostly professionals and skilled workers, and also domestics.
Landoil’s management and workforce had no problem sending salaries home to families. A decade prior, JDV had organized the dollar-remittance program in Manila.
As a young news correspondent then economic attaché to Vietnam, JDV had suffered the trouble of sending home foreign denominated income to be exchanged into pesos at the blackmarket.
He got then president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to authorize him to meet with central bank, finance and trade officials. Reluctantly, they agreed to let banks exchange foreign currency. JDV also convinced US officials to ease their rules.
That boosted employment of Filipinos in US military bases and companies in the Philippines, Guam, Okinawa, Saipan and Vietnam.
Hailed as one of the country’s Ten Outstanding Young Men, JDV won a congressional seat in 1969. He lost interest in politics when Marcos imposed martial law and abolished Congress in 1972. That’s when he set his sights on overseas construction and drilling.
Landoil’s success wasn’t always sweet. Marcos and cronies grabbed 45 percent for free. And when the Iran-Iraq War erupted in 1980, Saddam Hussein commandeered all of Landoil’s heavy equipment and computers while forcing workers to continue.
JDV absorbed the costs. Luckily for him, his Basic Petroleum struck oil in northeast Palawan.
Returning to Congress after the EDSA revolt, JDV’s brilliance shined. He ideated major legislations like Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization, Build-Operate-Transfer, Electric Power Industry Reform and Special Purpose Finance Vehicles.
JDV was well-respected overseas. World leaders readily signed up for his Centrist Democrat International and International Conference of Asian Political Parties.
ICAPP was unique in involving both ruling and opposition parties of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and ASEAN. Among his close friends were Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and East Timor President José Ramos-Horta.
Back in Pangasinan, JDV tirelessly helped less fortunate provincemates. He lived in a beachfront estate. But the half-kilometer winding road from the highway was bumpy and unpaved. JDV had promised constituents that he wouldn’t concrete his long driveway until he had first done so to all barangay roads in his congressional district.
I have my own unforgettable memory of JDV. It has to do with Free Rural Eye Clinics, a two-story hospital founded in San Fabian town by his first cousin, my uncle-in-law, ophthalmologist Dr. Guillermo de Venecia.
FREC performed free eye surgeries – cataract removal and lens implants, cross and wall-eye correction, glaucoma, Pterygium – for hundreds of thousands of indigents in Northern and Central Luzon.
Other board trustees aside from me were Albert del Rosario (later foreign secretary), JDV’s elder brother Oscar de Venecia, senator then Cabinet member Alberto Romulo, Tzu Chi Foundation medical director Dr. Antonio Say and Dagupan accountant Magnolia Oviedo.
We accommodated hospital patients but not their companions from as far north as Ilocos and Cagayan, west as Zambales, east as Nueva Ecija and south as Bicol.
Across a brook behind the two-hectare complex was a huge fish pond owned by JDV. It was ideal for us on which to erect huts for 200 hundred or so of out-of-towners per week. The board assigned me to work on it.
Without hesitation, JDV told me, “I’ve heard of your good work. Prepare the papers ASAP for my deed of donation.”
On Feb. 10, JDV passed away at 89. Deepest condolences to wife Gina Vera Perez de Venecia and their children. Interment is today at Libingan ng mga Bayani after mass at Heritage Memorial Chapels, Taguig.