Reply to BEE Chairman's Letter

April 8, 2009

ENGR. RODOLFO R. PENALOSA
Chairman, Board of Electrical Engineering
Professional Regulation Commission, Republic of the Philippines

Dear Engr. Penalosa,

Greetings!

I am in receipt of your reply to my letter dated December 8, 2008 relating to Board Resolution 36 Series of 2002 and would like to extend my gratitude for affording me your time to attend to this case. However, I would like to respond as follows:

1. Your letter does not address the main issue why I wrote the letter on December 8, 2008 nor does it address point by point the issues contained in my letter. Specifically, by allowing the resolution to be implemented, the PRC became, in effect, a sub-agency of IIEE.

2. Section 25 Article III of RA7920 does not specifically hold the engineers by law to be a member of an organization before they can practice and obtain their licenses. The law is very clear: "Every professional electrical engineer, registered electrical engineer and registered master electrician upon registration with the Board as such, shall ipso facto, become a member of the integrated national organization". In a layman's terms, we are as such, "by the fact itself", become a member of the integrated national organization when we register to the board. Which is what I want to do, register and renew my license with the Board but not to IIEE.

3. The board resolution runs in contrast to our inherent rights imposed under Article 3 of the Constitution, to wit: “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the law." By imposing the IIEE membership to be a prerequisite to gaining license renewal, the resolution does deprive the person liberty to choose which organization he wants to be a member of and not to mention his ability to perform as an electrical engineer which in turn deprives a person of his life.

4. Sighting the Supreme Court’s decision relating to the practice of profession in the Philippines versus IBP is, I believe, wrongly selected as this is not significant to what my case is all about. This decision will fall under your other program relating to “Continuing Process of Education”. This is again one contentious aspect of our profession which I will deal with separately.

5. Sighting Section 4(g), I believe you don’t understand the full context of this. This does not give you the power to make the PRC a sub-agency of IIEE or BEE by making the IIEE mandatory membership prerequisite to license renewal. The Board has actually abused its quasi-judicial power and at the same time usurped the Congress’ legislative power.

6. Sighting Section 25, I believe you don’t understand this correctly. See related answer in item 2.

7. In your 4th paragraph, I’m honestly surprised that you have this “rule” because the way I was told by the chief officer at window 18, and I quote: “kung ayaw mo maging member ng IIEE, e di wag kang magrenew ng lisensya mo” (if you don’t like to become member of IIEE, then do not renew your license) unquote. Obviously, this rule is known to only you. However, this again does not address the main issue. I came all the way to Manila to renew my license even though I am not a practicing engineer in the Philippines only to be turned down by this resolution. This paragraph again runs in contrast to what I discussed in items 3 and 5.

8. In your 5th paragraph, it is indeed unfortunate that I did not see the conferences. However just looking at the IIEE’s website, it doesn’t say anything significant at all, quite frankly. Hence, I don’t think I would be that much interested to attend any of the conferences, unless extremely necessary.

9. In your 6th paragraph, I would say I’m deeply saddened with the quality of electrical engineers in the Philippines. I had the chance of interviewing people that we could employ in our company and quite frankly, we never saw qualified people except those who had experience working abroad. This means that whatever you accomplished to improve and assist fellow professional s to date did not really help the professionals that much at all unfortunately. I would suggest that you deeply look into what accomplishment you are saying and whatever assistance the IIEE has done so far.

10. In your penultimate paragraph. I believe no one has every right to force a person to join certain organization as this is 100% unconstitutional. Your mandate is not the mandate of the law but by your resolution which I would like to be scrapped and revisited.

11. I’m enclosing herewith copy of the letter I sent to PRC Chairman Nicolas P. Lapena Jr. for your perusal and further enlightenment of the issue.

12. To be a member of IIEE does even play significant role in getting hired. It’s the experience. So why bother? And so why enforce it? And why abuse your quasi-judicial power?

In closing, I recommend the following:

1. Scrap the Resolution in its entirety.

2. Make the IIEE membership as voluntary.

3. Seek government assistance by enforcing in all government project that all participating company with electrical engineers become an IIEE member as part of pre-tender qualifications.

4. Make IIEE 100% public. Ask how many electrical engineers in the land know what IIEE does? Where are all the membership money go? Make them publicly accountable and prosecutable in case of fraud and diversion of funds.

I trust that you find the above in order and hope that I have enlightened you in one way or the other. I still demand I be allowed to renew my license without conditions. Thank you.