Cooperative Finds Ways to Force OFWs to Save

Bagnes, also Malinta’s newly-elected village chair, told the OFW Journalism Consortium that only five percent of its 670 members receive a subpoena.

“Nobody has been jailed for non-repayment,” Bagnes said.

Now, Kawayanan members race to reach a P5,000 plateau that will enable them to loan double that amount.

The loan bears a 2-percent interest rate and must be paid every month.

Quisel, the Bacorros, and OFW wife Yolanda Gayaban browse their passbooks and compare the amounts they’ve saved.

With four kids in tow, Arsenia Bacorro has some P4,200 saved, while those of distant cousin Perlita, still single, was higher: P7,931.

Gayaban admits losing profit from her house-to-house tocino (sweetened pork) retail business, but saving some from the remittances of her signboard painter-husband in Saudi Arabia, as well as from her own, led her to build up some P11,000 in the cooperative.

“You have three kids and P11,000 saved. I have six kids and some P3,000,” Quisel tells Gayaban.

“At least, I saved something,” she tells herself.

Solidarity

ASIDE from the cash loan, members of Kawayanan also could borrow rice every week and meat every two weeks, or for emergency hospitalization.

They could also buy produce at the cooperative’s mini-grocery at a discount as well as a chance to win groceries in weekly raffles after the weekly meeting.

During a meeting December 10, a religious leader stood up, opened a Bible, and read lines about saving money.

The wicker canister was already three-fourths full of passbooks.

Gayaban thinks Bagnes’s leadership is instrumental in the success of their group.

Bagnes, however, demurred, saying bayanihan, not transparency, is the secret to the cooperative’s growth.

It is, he claims, a trait since the Kawayanan was still an unregistered self-help group called the Kawayanan Bayanihan Savings Center.

Then under the BSRP of DILG, the center held lectures on saving.

When the deposits grew to P500,000 by May 2005, Kawayanan registered with the Cooperative Development Authority on June 1 that same year.

After getting some training from CDA, Kawayanan started to issue passbooks to record members’ savings and repaid loans.

The flexibility of the cooperative’s rules, he added, has also helped members especially since they spend for daily needs.

“While we have increased patience for them,” Bagnes adds, “members follow our rules”.

This village-wide empathy helped Quisel and her fellow members who have dependents working abroad.

“Saving has become habitual for me, and Kawayanan continues to grow as a result of each other’s trust,” Quisel said.

Individually, former illegal recruitment victim Perlita Bacorro has been challenged while selling kerosene daily: “You have to work hard just to place a deposit in Kawayanan.”

Still, there were new members during the meeting, as pointed out by Quisel.

And as like the week before, a raffle was held after the meeting, with processed meat, canned goods, and rice as prizes.

Quisel did not win any that night.

But as she stepped out of the town hall, she is reminded of something.

“I have to place my deposit next week.” (www.ofwjournalism.net)