Gordon ready to hold hi-level meet with
telcos execs on 'text-for-change' bill

Independent Senator Richard J. Gordon today said he is ready to hold a high-level meeting among telecommunications companies (telcos) in a bid to forge a mutually-acceptable deal on how they can help address the backlogs in the country's education and health care infrastructures.

Gordon, author of Senate Bill 2402, an Act creating the Health and Education Acceleration Program (HEAP) Corporation, said he is willing to meet with executives of telcos if only to convince them to take an active part in addressing the problems plaguing the education and health care systems.

"I would be most willing to see the executives of the telcos and make a presentation showing them the deplorable condition of our public school system. We just want to know what we can live with," he said.

"You have heard my position on the matter, I do not want to mulct the telecommunications sector. But we have a very huge figure here to work on--72 million mobile phone users in the country and two billion text messages a day--those are staggering figures," he added.

Using industry figures of an estimated 72 mobile phone subscribers in the country and about two billion local Short Messaging System (SMS) being processed daily, the bill's passage, if telcos would remit 10%, would generate about P73 billion a year or P365 billion in five years.

The country's public school system is confronted with a shortage of at least 12,000 classrooms, four million seats, 63 million textbooks, 39,000 teachers and 8,000 principals.

During the recent hearing on the HEAP bill, Gordon showed a double-spread advertisement by one of the telecom giants. He said that instead of spending exorbitant fees on advertisements and promotions, the telcos could instead place the money on education and health care.

"It is important that we realize that, at some point in time, we should have the determination to find out how we can help the country. I am not going after the telcos here, I am going after poverty and the pitiful state of the country's public educational system," he said.

Figures from the Department of Education show that the country's public school system currently lacks at least 12,000 classrooms, four million seats, 63 million textbooks, 39,000 teachers and 8,000 principals.

Gordon explained that under SB 2402, telcos would remit a small portion of their annual net revenues from local text messages to the HEAP Corporation, which will spearhead the rehabilitation and improvement of the public school system.