By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
And that somehow leads us to a startling fact in the life of Emilio which has something to do with his work with cooperatives. Just where have you seen a manager of a cooperative with his house and lot adjoining the cooperative building? Some may call it coincidence but personally, I am inclined to believe that God is “rewarding” Emilio for his excellent stewardship of TAFAMULCO. When I remarked on the phenomenon of his house being next door to the cooperative building, he related how it happened as follows: Sometime in 1992, a member of the cooperative offered her lot in Casigayan as payment for her long overdue loan. He thought this was an opportunity not only because the loan will be paid but because at the time, the cooperative had no lot of its own but was in fact renting in the old hospital building of the UCCP. The Board and later, the GA, approved the purchase. End of that year, half of the adjacent lot was offered for sale which was heaven sent as he was looking for a lot for purposes of dwelling for sometime. The truth was that he was already offered a lot in Dagupan Weste but did not find the neighborhood to his liking. So he jumped at the offer of the lot abutting the cooperative lot.
The story did not end there. Observing that the cooperative lot was idle and therefore a dead investment, some directors pushed for its sale in 1998. The proposal was presented to the General Assembly that year where it was met with vehement opposition. TAFAMULCO Legal Counsel Simplicio Caguay who led the opposition argued that it was the wrong time to sell the lot because of the steep appreciation of land in the then town which is expected to even heighten in the coming years as land for sale get even more scarce. The attempt was voted down by the GA but the proponents refused to give up and they tried again the following GA. The decision did not change though.
In what could be a master stroke in the history of the cooperative, the General Assembly decided to construct the cooperative building in the Casigayan lot in 2004 with the cooperative moving its offices there the following year. Emilio likes to believe that the two-storey building multiplied the public’s confidence in the cooperative which significantly contributed to the very rapid growth of its assets and membership since then.
At the time the TAFAMULCO moved to Casigayan, Emilio’s 3 x 5 meter house which he bought in Nambaran for P20,000.00 and had transferred to his lot in 1993 has given way to a two-storey concrete house thanks to a loan from the cooperative. From then on, it took him less than a minute to report to his office via the back door of the cooperative building which is accessible from his porch unlike before when his work place was more than a kilometer away.
It should also be considered that circumstances beyond his control brought him from Bito, Hingyon, Ifugao where he was born in 1963. Because his parents Fernando, Sr. and Concepcion were poor and were having a hard time raising their seven children, he and his siblings were “distributed” to relatives. That was how he found himself in the home of his uncle Martin in 1978. At the time, he had already finished his second year high school at the Ifugao Academy in Kiangan. He continued his studies at the Tabuk Institute graduating in 1980.
“With no money to continue my education after I graduated from high school, Uncle Martin told me to just study at the newly opened Kalinga Community College so I enrolled in Stenography. The problem was when I graduated the following year, there was nowhere to apply the skill. At the suggestion of Aunt Virgie (Virginia Dulnuan, wife of Rev. Dulnuan), I enrolled in Bachelor of Science in Commerce at the KCC. I babysat my younger cousins as my way of reciprocating the support of my uncle and aunt,” Emilio recalls.
He graduated in 1985 – and the rest I already told you.
So it was poverty which brought the young Emilio to Kalinga as a teenager in 1978. He still says “botbot ti bulsa” (pocket has holes) these days referring to himself but of course, he cannot deny that his labors through the years have significantly improved his life so that he did not need the assistance of others to raise and send his children to school like his parents had. While enhancing his economic condition through his employment with the TAFAMULCO, he was and is instrumental in opening doors of opportunities for economic upliftment to many people through cooperative credit.
As far as I am concerned, with his 30 years of devoted and life-changing service to the community, Emilio has earned every right to behave in the manner he thinks fit. After all, he has been that way all these years and look at the enviable achievements tucked under his belt as one of the stalwarts of the cooperative movement not only in the province but the region and the nation. If the man who nursed the TAFAMULCO and keyed its climb to the 233rd rank of 23,677 cooperatives nationwide does not mind being mistaken for the driver or janitor of the TAFAMULCO, well, that’s his choice as far as I am concerned.
Long live CEO Emilio, the epitome of old school Cordillera thinking which values substance way ahead of appearance! **
