I was in Iloilo City when Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan hit, but the city
itself had been spared. Not so the surrounding municipalities, some of which
are just an hour’s drive away.
A few days later I was at the Iloilo Sports Complex packing used clothes
and canned food into boxes as part of our company’s relief drive. One of my
co-workers cracked that he would stick his picture on one of the boxes. This
was a reference of how some politicians were distributing relief goods with
their mugs plastered on the packaging or grinning out of streamers at the
distribution site, and how these brazen heavy-handed attempts at
self-aggrandizement were drawing the ire of the denizens of social media.
This made me think of the relief efforts of both government and private
companies. To be sure, the Department of Social Welfare and Development did the
best they could, but they were hindered by a system riddled with poor
infrastructure and politics.
Then I read of the efforts of the MVP Group of Companies for Yolanda
victims. When I was stationed in Manila many years ago I volunteered for one of
their relief efforts as a favour to a friend. I am certain that Manny
Pangilinan’s face did not appear in any of the relief packages. And why should
it? Unlike with politicians, there would be no point.
I brought this up with someone, whose only response was to sneer that
big companies use this as a tax write-off. Well, if it gets help to disaster
victims, I have no argument with that.
But is Corporate Social Responsibility motivated by pure altruism?
The private sector certainly seeks to improve its corporate image,
motivate and retain employees and break into new markets, states a study by
IRIN. The same study also says that companies regard disaster risk reduction as
an investment essential for the business community.
So there you have it. But the most important questions is this: Is that so terrible?
The problem is that we see any gains by corporations as nefarious activities by blood-sucking, greedy, grasping, money-grubbing capitalists. As a Third-World
country, this old chestnut is further inflamed by our entertainment media which
inevitably features that cliché of the Wicked Rich villain cackling behind a
wall of goons.
The plain truth is that companies need to benefit if they are going to survive.
Former US President Bill Clinton said: “We
want healthy companies because only they can invest in our communities.”
If a company goes under, they won’t be much
help to the community during times of normalcy, let alone disaster.
Ask
yourself: Is ANYTHING motivated by
pure altruism? When you dropped P50 into the collection box, did it make you feel good. Some may have done it to gain favors
or to assuage a feeling of guilt. We are doing it to serve our own needs, too.
Why should companies be exempted? Whether it is a poor widow dropping a copper
into the poor box or a major corporation donating a planeload of goods to a
storm-stricken people, everyone benefits from helping people out.
