Letter from a CEO of a company that left the P. I. to relocated to China.
This letter does not have one place that we can find questionable. What this man says has been experienced by dozens and dozens of other companies.
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All of our American staff read your website. My daughter in America told of of your site after Philippine students told her. She said the Philipinos all are laughing at the inability of the police to shut you down.
I send this to your organization with the desire that our experience in the "Philippine Islands Paradise" might help others. The Islands would truly be a paradise if the people were not there.
The whole damned place is nothing more than a black hole for money. They are never satisfied with what they are able to extort under threats of closing us and others down. They do not care for the Philipino workers we employ. They are single minded in extortion to line their pockets and when we informed them we had to let more than 500 employees go because we had no choice but to move to a more "jobs friendly" country, the devils said we were causing Philipinos to starve. Their extortions have about taxed us out of existence with extortions and "facilitation fees". It is like there is a disconnect of their brains that prevents them from seeing they are the problem!
Every government agency has many layers of corruption. Every agency, fire department, sanitation, all have their hands out and are constantly giving us what you call "the Philippine Island salute" under threats of finding something wrong so they can close us down or cause us to go into their corrupt judicial system!
We canvassed all government agencies before we came to be sure we were making the right move and wanted to be safe.
Every head of every agency smilingly promised us total cooperation, low taxes and poo-hooed horror stories we brought to their attention.
The biggest lies came out of the agency charged with import customs duties. They promised us we would never have to pay more than 20% on our machinery and raw materials.
This agency lied to us. We had to pay outrageous import taxes as they seemed to make extra add-on charges appear at will and never for the same amounts. We had materials and machines stolen right out from under their noses at the North Harbor. They said they were not responsible. Some of thee machines were cnc controlled and cost tens of thousands of dollars! They still taxed us for the machines that were stolen!
We hired detectives that gathered evidence proving there was systematic theft st the North Harbor. Some of these detectives observed huge bribes being paid to customs officials in plain view of anyone that stood by looking. One of the worst was a Moslem woman at the end cubicle, but others were also demanding and receiving pay-offs!
At the end of the day our detectives observed them as they emptied their drawers of hundreds of thousands of pesos. Our men observed this 3 days running!
When the containers are opened to check our contents the men unloading are experts in stealing and they steal anything and everything they can!
We should have pulled out right then and there, but they knew we had too much invested to pull out!
We had workers coming in daily asking for advances because their mother was dying from cancer, their sister was in a car accident, and various stories.
Everyone we gave advances to NEVER paid us back. When we said we would deduct our money from their salaries they would call the agency over labor and they would threaten us with fines and a possible closing with "years in courts"!
Workers would mostly be absent on Mondays, which we discovered was the day they were getting over their weekend drunken stupors. They still expected to be paid the salaries agreed upon.
Their bookkeepers cooked the books, so we paid more to bring our own in from America. The Philippine bookkeepers took us to court, but we won when a representative from the judge told us he could guarantee us a favorable ruling if we paid a "facilitation fee of 200,00 pesos". We paid it!
Many employees could be depended upon to make a product that was bad when it was virtually impossible to do since we had so many computer controlled machines. Yet they managed to find a way to do just that! They advertise "Proudly Philippine made" in brochures all over the country, but we would never take pride in the products they made for us! They consistently proved they had racial pride, but not an ounce of pride in making a good product.
When we had to fire one we were accused of being racists too many times to count! We were threatened by the workers every few months with a crippling strike if we did not pay them higher wages and the whole time they were stealing more than 200 pounds of products from us monthly! We couldn't stop them. We finally guessed the women were secreting our products between their upper thighs or worse inside their bodies. The thefts seemed to be systematic, planned and organized. They obviously had buyers from somewhere.
The fire departments said we must buy extinguishers from a company they recommended, which our detectives discovered was owned by the head of a government agency. They came by every 6 to 8 months instead of every year telling us we had to change the contents and recharge the extinguishers.
The police came by 4 times a year wanting "donations". The NBI and CIDG also did!
Our Western men and women and our Chinese employees were extorted by all kinds of police agencies including the NBI and CIDG and in several instances Army! One man said it was like a target was painted on him every time he went out. His wife crying said, "No we were targets even in our home!"
Some of our Chinese employees were kidnapped and/or their children were kidnapped.
We bought bullet proof cars and the extortions still did not abate!
The Germans, Australians, and English told us not to go, but we were lied to and tricked by the heads of the various agencies we talked to. They treated us like kings and smothered us with kindness. Took us to parties, presented beautiful women to us, and gave us gifts.
We wondered how other company heads could possibly say such bad things against a people so nice, courteous and giving. We did not realize until it was too late that they were simply all con men! They are extremely crafty. They ruthlessly fooled us, every agency head we talked to are nothing more than extremely greedy liars and thieves! Most are attorneys! The only person worse than an attorney is a Philippine attorney!
I can honestly say that I never met a Philipino that I could trust or believe what they said. They never did accept us. They viewed us as a bank safe that they they must figure out the combination to to get at the money inside.
Our two locations were broken into numerous times, safes cracked, guards corrupt and working with crime gangs or friends. Our Philippine drivers could not be trusted. After a few kidnappings we brought in our own drivers at company expense and gave them firearms we illegally bought from a police general in Quezon City! We bought glock 9mms and six German made MP something submachine guns. The 9mm pistols cost us 60,000 each and the German submachine guns, also 9mm, cost us $7,000 each. We all felt better, but we knew this only protected us from the police backed car jackings and police backed kidnappings, not from extortions. The general told us he could insure we would not be kidnapped or car jacked if we bought his guns. We later put two and two together after a detective told us the police were controlling most of the car jackings and kidnappings gangs as a source of "extra money". Gosh darn, what a helluva place to live!
We set aside a fund of one million dollars to pay for problems if one of our drivers had to defend us and our families! The same Camp Crame general told us he would take care of any problems. We never told him of the one million "Problem fund"! We were only beginning to learn!
They all tell you what they think you want to hear. They all say they can do the work, but our product suffered a god-awful decline in quality. We gained a bad rep, so bad in fact that WalMart stopped buying from us, but they would still buy China made products. We bought some of our Chinese competitors' products and tested them. They were much better than ours!
We are slowly regaining our name, but have learned to be careful in China. The Chinese have a tendency toward corruption, but not on the massively HUGE scale we encountered in the Philippines! We should have come here years ago, but the English speaking ability and their smiles tricked us.
They told us they would give us tax breaks and they did. The Philipinos lied to us.
The Chinese told us their workers can make a quality product if our quality control people made it plain to them what was expected. They told us the truth, but the Philipinos lied to us.
I could go on with this, but you already know how it is in the Philippines.
We are not extorted, no one targets us and the various agencies have not broken their promises to us.
Occasionally a product will disappear, but not like the organized theft we experienced in the "Philippine paradise".
Best of all is that we can go out for a walk anytime of the day or night without a bodyguard. We do not have to wonder what is hiding in an alley and we soon stopped looking over our backs and across the streets to see who was keeping pace with us.
Our single men must turn away women daily and the women will not murder them to get their riches after marriage!
A heavy load of oppression and fear has been lifted when we relocated to here.
After years of trying to just recover out initial investment we still lost money. It was the worst mistake we ever made. We lost years of profits from our Philippine operation and in addition gained fame as a company that "used to make a quality product!"
We advise others to never consider relocating to the P.I. We advise to never visit here and never retire to there. We suggest they stay in their own country or go to China! Never go to the P.I. except to fly over it and pee out a window praying that God will direct the urine to the heads of as many corrupt people as possible.
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