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GSIS: Huge sums for public relations

October 1, 2006
GSIS: Huge sums for public relations. Check it out:
(Philippine Daily Inquirer Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) THE GOVERNMENT SERVICE INsurance System (GSIS) spends huge sums for public relations every year. Downloading from the website of the Commission on Audit (COA), I got the following figures for PR expenses of the GSIS: P144.23 million in 2003 and P151.9 million in 2004. These staggering sums were collected from government employees, many of whom are minimum wage earners.



COAs website did not show comparative figures for 2005. The 2005 audit is probably still going on.

I asked my compadre Charlie Agatep, one of the best PR practitioners in the country, Just what is public relations? What follow are snatches from an article he wrote for the Inquirer about a year ago.

The late Pete Teodoro of Philprom and Joe Carpio of San Miguel Corp. defined public relations as doing good and telling the public about it. This fundamental truth about what PR is, and what PR does, has been the basis of legitimate PR practice. PR is making significant contributions to our democratic society by embracing what Thomas Jefferson described as the engineering of public consent.

Edward L. Bernays, the acknowledged father of public relations, described a PR consultant as a social scientist who advises a client on the attitudes and actions he must take in order to appeal to the public it serves. Bernays suggested that the PR consultant ascertains through research how the public perceives the client, then advises what action programs the client must undertake to earn public acceptance.

In my years in the PR profession, my guiding principle has been to help individuals and organizations tell their stories well. Stories about their social responsibility projects that improve the quality of life. Or about their contributions to make the world a better place to live in.

Communications is the tool of the public relations consultant. And it is through communications that we, PR practitioners must try and protect our honorable profession from being stripped of the legitimacy by incompetents who masquerade as PR consultants.

Public relations is a profession of great social impact. Practitioners heavily influence the channels of communication and should therefore be held responsible and accountable for the attitudes and behavior of the publics they are constantly trying to reach.

What are the publics the GSIS must reach out to? There are 1,500,000 government employees. They are captive clients because membership is, by law, compulsory. Then there are 200,000 retirees. These numbers are not too impressive.

To communicate with the members, the GSIS has a weekly one-hour TV show. I guess there is a parallel radio program. Then, there is the scholarship program. There must be other programs I dont know about. Finally, there are the print ads.

But, how could the GSIS have spent over P151 million in 2004 for public relations? And who is the PR consultant advising the GSIS?

I estimate that the total budget for public relations of the entire private sector insurance industry (34 life and 94 non-life companies) is nowhere near P151 million in one year. And yet, private insurance business is the most competitive enterprise ever invented by man, as opposed to the strict monopoly that the GSIS is.

Unfortunately, the COA report does not break down the P151 million. But graft and corruption stink to high heaven.

Copyright 2006 Philippine Daily Inquirer. Source : Financial Times Information Limited (Trademark)


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