Ex-PEZA head de Lima, PETA win Ramon Magsaysay awards

July 27, 2017

Former Philippine Economic Zone Authority head Lilia de Lima and the Philippine Education Theater Association (PETA) were named winners of the annual Ramon Magsaysay Award. "In electing Lilia De Lima to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay award the Board of Trustees recognize her unstinting sustained leadership in building a credible and efficient PEZA proving that the honest competent and dedicated work of public servants can indeed redound into real economic  benefits to millions of Filipinos ", Ramon del Rosario Jr. , chair of Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, said in a press conference on Thursday. De Lima, 77, became the first director general of the Philippine Export Processing Zone Authority (PEZA) in 1995 and remained for 21 years before retiring in 2016. Former Senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr., the son of the late Philippine president whom the   award is named for, said in ambush interview: "When you are within a PEZA when there is a BPO ( business process outsourcing) or manufacturing or processing instead of so many taxes you pay only five percent of loss , a lot of other countries had followed that. “ In the citation for de Lima, it said: “PEZA has generated, in direct and indirect employment, some 6.3 million jobs for Filipinos.” The citation said PEZA ecozones increased to 343 when de Lima retired from 16 when it began. The number of  registered enterprises rose from 331 to 3,756 and investments reached three trillion pesos, it added. It said de Lima “determinedly halved the bloated 1,200-person bureaucracy she had inherited from a system of political patronage; she developed PEZA’s work culture into one marked by honesty, efficiency and—quite literally—one-stop, nonstop service.” In electing PETA to receive the award, the board of trustees said it “recognizes its bold, collective contributions in shaping the theater arts as a force for social change.” “In the Philippines, no theater organization has been as committed and effective for so long in demonstrating this truth as the Philippines Educational Theater Association,” the citation said. PETA was organized 50 years ago and despite martial law from 1972-1986, it “stayed active, together with other groups, in staging theater as a medium for protest conscientization even under a dictatorship,” the citation said. Yoshiaki Ishizawa, a Japanese who led the restoration of the Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Gethsie Shanmugam from Sri Lanka who helped in rebuilding lives from the psychosocial wounds of war and violence of the victims of the three-decade civil war in Sri Lanka are included in the list of awardees. "Mr. Ishizawa seems to be one of the few Japanese nationals who have been exposed to world developments and it is a unique thing he had to go all the way from his country to Cambodia to help restore  and to put a lot of his time and energy and resources to improve the culture of that country", Magsaysay said. Manuel Hizon, the foundation's communications director said Ishizawa led the restoration of many temples in Angkor Wat and trained the Cambodians how to restore the heritage. Tony Tay from Singapore was selected for mobilizing collective goodwill to address hidden hunger. He and his wife collected unsold breads and vegetables and brought it to the Canossian convent to feed the people. Abdon Nababan of Indonesia gave compelling face and voice to Adat communities and their rights. He was one of the organizers of a congress that launched AMAN (Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago) which represents over 17 million Indonesian people. (Alanna Ambi/DMS)