Based on an interview by Luz Rimban

YOU'VE heard people say that graft and corruption affect national development. But what many don't now is that these two evils can also kill. That's why I blew the whistle on my own agency. I wanted to save lives.

	[artwork by Nonoy Marcelo]

I used to work for a government agency that dealt with shipping. Before I spoke out against what my colleagues and superiors were doing, I felt helpless and undeserving to be called a civil servant. I received my salary from the people and yet I could not even assure them of safety I wanted the bureaucracy purged of corrupt and incompetent personnel who should be held responsible for the loss of lives arising from accidents at sea.

Without corruption, we would not be called the maritime disaster capital of the world. In my four-year stay in that agency, I witnessed how corruption caused maritime accidents that could have been averted had the agency been strict in enforcing regulatory measures. But it took me a while to find the courage to go against the very people I worked with.

I had entered the government service believing rather naively that our officials were clean. When I was in pre-law, one of my professors worked in the agency I would eventually be part of. Soon he became the agency's head, and he asked me to work there.

Everyone was telling me he and his group were corrupt. But I didn't believe them. He was, after all, my teacher, role model and friend.

After finishing my law degree, this professor again asked me to join the agency. I eagerly accepted his offer. Once inside, there were people who told me he and his group were on the take. I took it upon myself to prove them wrong and conducted my own investigation. I turned out to be the one who ended up so disappointed.

I checked out the property records at Parañaque where my former professor lived. I found out that the house he said he was renting was actually registered in his name and transferred to him by a group that won a government contract.

I further investigated him and his group and I discovered that he kept a bank account with deposits from a shipping company. But I kept quiet and decided to simply do my job, even if my image of this government official — my friend — had begun to crumble. I busied myself drafting memorandum circulars and decisions in quasi-judicial cases until one sea tragedy after another happened.

I decided finally to confer with him. I told him that I knew a lot of the under-the-table deals he had made. I didn't really care about that, I said. After all it wasn't my soul that was on the line.

But I begged and pleaded with my boss to have pity on all the victims of the sea mishaps. His reply was a shrug and something in the lines of "it was all taken care of." I warned him that his corrupt directors were using him. But he refused to heed my plea.

It is difficult to say how agency officials commit graft and corruption. It would be almost impossible to pinpoint at exactly what stage grease money changes hands. But why else would people in the agency let requirement was not met and regulations were not being enforced, if not for money and favors?

At the very least, the agency would be guilty of violating Section 3 of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. Because then, it would be giving "unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference to private entities through manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence."

Take the case of the M/V Viva Antipolo VII, which was granted a 10-year franchise. At the time of the grant, it had a passenger insurance policy valid only until 1991. The vessel capsized in 1995 but by then the policy had expired and was not renewed. As a result, the victims could not be immediately indemnified. The agency allowed the vessel to operate for four years without a valid passenger insurance policy. The agency was remiss in its obligation to require the ship owner to renew its policy under the pain of revocation of its Certificate of Public Convenience or CPC.

I BEGAN to think that if such practices were rampant in the agency, then eventually, it would be the seafaring public that would have to pay the price. I felt there were more accidents waiting to happen. The question was, what could I do to stop them?

Then one day, I was deep at work in a TV station, organizing yet another press conference for my boss. At one point, I found myself inside the director's booth and saw that my boss' deputy was being interviewed live in a news program about yet another shipping disaster. But I took little notice because I had to confer with the program's director.

I was facing five TV monitors while I was trying to talk to the director. The monitors were running footage of another sea accident. I saw the lifeless bodies of children, mangled and dismembered. I saw dead women, all bloated and gone white. I may have stopped talking to the director, I don't remember. I do remember staring at the monitors, and having tears that had welled in my eyes rolling down my cheeks.

That was when I decided to do something. Through their earpieces, I fed the anchorpersons of the news program with questions that exposed the negligence of the bosses. I saw how the deputy squirmed in his seat not knowing how to answer the questions. I knew that the agency to which I belonged was responsible for these deaths.

But shaming the deputy was not enough to stop more maritime disasters. A succession of sea accidents soon followed. One of them was the sinking of the passenger ferry M/V Gretchen I just off the coast of Cadiz City in Negros Occidental. Thirty children died in that tragedy

It was a senseless accident. The ferry was 500 meters from the shoreline, waiting for the tide to rise so it could dock. But strong waves battered the vessel's wooden hull and hammered the keel onto the seabed, causing it to disintegrate.

The vessel was an aging wooden-hulled vessel that should have undergone dry-docking two months before. But the people in my agency gave it the go signal to sail even without the required dry-docking. Subsequent investigations found the vessel to be too dilapidated to withstand strong waves.

Yet even given that, the loss of lives could have been less, if not avoided, had there been life jackets for children on board. The vessel's Certificate of Inspection clearly showed it had nothing of the sort. True, it had 114 life jackets for adults — too big for children. But even after an inspection showed that the vessel did not carry child-size versions of this vital life-saving device, the ferry was still issued a provisional authority to operate.

There was also the Kimelody Cristy, which burned and capsized at 1:00 am on December 13, 1995. News of the Kimelody's sinking broke out over the radio in the early morning hours of that day, and our agency's head was among those immediately interviewed about the tragedy Therefore he knew about the sinking before the start of the working day.

The Kimelody was apparently sailing without the provisional authority to operate. in other words, it was not licensed to sail. Apparently to cover up my agency's negligence, some people falsified documents to make it appear that the vessel had the necessary papers. A Senate inquiry later revealed that the move was made on the very morning the Kimelody sank.