OUT OF POLITICS. Former Gov. Panlilio presents a new “miracle” for Pampanga. PHOTO BY BONG LACSON
ANGELES CITY – A five-year plan to eradicate poverty in Pampanga was announced here by the ecumenical group Talete King Panyulung Kapampangan, Inc. (TPKI).
TPKI chair and president, former Pampanga Gov. Eddie “Among Ed” T. Panlilio made the announcement last Friday at the media forum “Batirulan King Café Juan” at the Holy Angel University here organized by the Capampangan In Media, Inc. (CAMI) and HAU in cooperation with the Clark Development Corp. (CDC) and the Social Security System (SSS).
Panlilio said TPKI, which is based in the City of San Fernando, is expanding its micro-financing operation into other areas to help eradicate poverty in Pampanga after empowering impoverished families with supervised, cheap livelihood loans for the last 27 years.
Panlilio, who is also a Catholic priest-on-leave, said TPKI’s five-year plan aims to initially help the needy residents of Pampanga to pull themselves out of poverty via education, particularly high-level technical training, entrepreneurship, farming and forestry techniques and management, and even socialized housing development.
TPKI’s membership and management board consists of individuals representing different religious organizations and persuasions. It was patterned after, and got its initial support from the Metro Manila-based Tulay sa Pag-unlad, Inc. (TPI), also an ecumenical body.
Panlilio said TPKI’s Pampanga experiment would hopefully serve as a template for similar activities in other provinces where it now operates and, eventually, the rest of the country. TPKI now operates five branches in Pampanga, two each in Tarlac and Bulacan and one in Bataan.
Out of politics
The former governor ruled out speculations that this “ambitious” TPKI venture is tied in with his political plans in 2016. “I’m out of politics,” he quipped, stressing that his “focus now is to find ways to empower as many of my countrymen, as possible, to improve their economic and social lives, and eventually have myself reintegrated into the Catholic priesthood.”
Panlilio went on-leave as a priest when he contested, and won, Pampanga’s governorship in 2007. But San Fernando Archbishop Paciano B. Aniceto has yet to act on Panlilio’s bid to return to active priesthood.
Panlilio said he initially plans to activate the TPKI Learning Institute in the City San Fernando to offer all accredited courses of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) from computer programming to computer repair, auto mechanics and heavy equipment operation and repairs, etc. on a scholarship basis or post-graduation deferred payment plan; modern farming and forestry management and techniques, and other career paths.
Meanwhile, Panlilio said TPKI is also now actively pushing for the organization of a “Guild of Craftsmen” that will operate as a body to issue certificates to graduates of farming, forestry and other livelihood and technical courses.
“This means, a certificate of the guild will serve as key of a holder to land a job here and abroad or even avail himself of fi nancing for a business undertaking or project,” Panlilio said. He admitted this new thrust of TPKI is not only ambitious but also somewhat impossible to achieve given its current financial capabilities.
However, he said he is positive that TPKI would deliver as it did in the last 27 years with hardly any resources to speak of when it began operations. Panlilio noted that “in those 27 years, TPKI had managed to extend some P3.7 billion micro- loans to 70,000 impoverished individuals with a start-up fund that allowed it to extend P600 loans each to a few borrowers.
And this was all on account of our conviction that anything that is being done in the name God will never fail.”
The former governor was mum as to the source of funding and other details of TPKI’s expanded program, except to say that as in the past, the group would source the bulk of its requirements through networking with other individuals and institutions here and abroad.
