Note: As our way of honoring the memory and expressing our gratitude for his long years of faithful service to the Tabuk Farmers’ Multi-purpose Cooperative, we run the story of the late CEO Emilio Dulnuan who passed away from a lingering illness on May 5, 2021. This article was first published in the Tabuk Life magazine of the Tabuk City LGU in 2015.
Without meaning to, Tabuk Farmer’ Multi-purpose Cooperative (TAFAMULCO) CEO Emilio Dulnuan makes a lot of people laugh with his manner of doing things including the way he speaks. Just ask anybody who has worked with him in the TAFAMULCO and he might have an anecdote or two which could tickle you to the bone.
I have one such anecdote. One morning when a typhoon had already made a land fall in Cagayan and was expected to pass Kalinga, I received a call from an employee of the TAFAMULCO asking if the governor had issued a memorandum suspending work in government and private offices due to the approaching storm. I said that there is none but that there was no necessity because of the imminent arrival of the typhoon. The caller angrily told me they needed an official announcement because Emilio had called them to report to work and the only way to get him off their backs is to tell him that authorities have declared there is no work during the day.
When I asked the employee what happened later, he said that not one of the employees reported during the storm with Emilio not taking it against them. He went on to relate that Emilio does not respect information that such and such is a non-working day unless he could see an official issuance or declaration to that effect. The employee confirmed that one time when a Muslim special day was declared a non-working holiday, Emilio had asked the employees “Apay Muslim kayo?” (Are you Muslims?)
“That’s the very reason we now post on the wall the advisory of Malacañang on the holidays during the year,” the employee said.
Another subject of numerous anecdotes is Emilio’s low regards for the external. He does not seem to care about the way he appears. He usually goes to the office in T-shirts, ordinary pants and wearing slippers. That’s the very reason that a lot of times, members who do not know him would be asking where the manager was when he is around or when they mistake him to be the collector or janitor. According to some employees, when he and Driver Ferdinand Uboan travel, there are some people who mistake him to be the driver and Ferdinand the manager. Emilio does not make any adjustments in his apparel when attending national cooperative events so that there is this story that during one session in a cooperative summit, the strap of one of his Duralite slippers snapped. I still have to ask his companions the entire story.
Anyway, according to Rev. Regino Ramos, manager of the Ambigatton Multi-purpose Cooperative (AMPC) but who used to work in the TAFAMULCO as manager of its agribusiness and later as director, they tried to make Emilio dress appropriately for his position by imposing a uniform but this too did not work. He related that Emilio would wear the barong with top buttons unbuttoned and worse, he would still come to the office in his slippers. Rev. Ramos said that that was as far as they could go in correcting the contempt of Emilio for dressing as called for by his position because nobody could talk about the matter to his face.
A source said that one other unique trait of Emilio is he treats the money of the cooperative like he treats his own money: in utmost thriftiness or stinginess. Because of this, officers and employees of the cooperative do not welcome traveling with Emilio because of the near starvation diet during the trip. The source said that at one time, a group from the cooperative ate in a restaurant. After he was through eating, Emilio right away went to pay the bill thus, some of those in the entourage had to forego their intentions of ordering more food.
The source told me that at one time while he was regaling some people with stories of how Emilio counts every centavo of the money of the cooperative, a lawyer in the neighborhood expressed the desire to join the TAFAMULCO because, according to him, with a manager like Emilio, his money would be safe.
Yes, regardless of his failing to satisfy the expectations of some people of how someone in his position should look, the real story of Emilio is as a manager worth his salt. When I asked the employee cited above as having called me about the official suspension of work in the face of the coming storm if there ever was a time when some members wanted Emilio booted out as manager, he said that none that he knows of although one could not discount the possibility that there might be some members who harbor that sentiment but do not have the courage to express it. Rev. Ramos expressed agreement saying that there’s nothing he could say against Emilio as chief executive officer (CEO) except his inability to dress up like the top banana of the cooperative.
Well, this means that the members and officers of the cooperative are contented with Emilio’s performance as the manager of the TAFAMULCO. And that counts for a lot because in the entire 30 years life of the cooperative, it has known no other manager but Emilio.
Sometime in 1985 after he graduated with the degree in Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the then Kalinga Community College, now Kalinga-Apayao State College, he helped his late uncle Rev. Martin Dulnuan to prepare the proposal to the philanthropic organization Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) to give seed money to a farmers’ association to be organized in the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) in Tabuk. His uncle who was then pastor of the Tabuk UCCP had learned about the existence of the AAFLI earlier and felt that organizing the farmers’ organization would benefit his farmer parishioners.
He was in Manila taking the board for public accountants in November of that year which he eventually flunked when he received a telegram from his uncle telling him to come home as an association is being organized and he was needed to man it. He heeded his uncle and that was how he became the cashier, bookkeeper and storekeeper rolled into one of the farm input store of the newly organized Tabuk Farmers Inputs Loan Association (TAFILA). The capital of the store came from the seed money of P150,000.00 from the AAFLI. The store was located on the ground floor of the defunct John Rauch Memorial Hospital beside the UCCP church in Magsaysay, Tabuk.
Crisis hit the TAFILA right away because in 1988 and in accordance with the contract, the AAFLI stopped the subsidy for his and night guard Benny Wayet’s salaries. Because of that, Wayet was laid off and so the store became a one-man operation as he also took over the guarding of the stocks at night.
“In 1988 and 1989, the Board was inactive. I had nowhere to get my salary but I decided to work as volunteer as I could not abandon what has been started. Since I had no salary to speak of starting in January 1989 to support myself and give my contribution towards the college education of two of my younger brothers, I decided to advance some amount from the income of the store and likewise sidelined as agent for the Platinum Plans, a pre-need education company,” Emilio recalled.
In 1989, Emilio registered the association as a cooperative with the Bureau of Cooperative Development under the Department of Agriculture with the registration effected on January 25,1990. During the General Assembly (GA) of that year, he was appointed as manager. The GA hired Beatriz Perez as clerk, turned the amount Emilio advanced from the store as his salary during the given period and gave him a regular pay of P2,000.00 a month. Later that year, the Board also engaged the services of erstwhile Treasurer Luz Orprecio as Loan Officer and Jovita Dalayon as Storekeeper.
Because of the shortage of funds for their credit operation which they started when they became a cooperative, the Board approved his recommendation to borrow from the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP). Unfortunately, they were unable to pay on the due date and had to extend for three months because the earthquake which took place on July 16,1990 stopped the delivery of fertilizers resulting to very low collections from members. Emilio recalls that LBP management scolded him because TAFAMULCO was the only borrower which failed to pay its loan on time. But since that time on until the cooperative stopped borrowing from the LBP in 2000, none of their loans became overdue.
Emilio counts among his depressing experiences as a manager his having been scolded for that delayed loan repayment in 1990. Another was the time when they had a row with the National Food Authority (NFA) over a P78,000.00 incentives under the Institutionalized Procurement Program of the agency. The NFA refused to release the incentive claiming that TAFAMULCO had exceeded its delivery ceiling. There was that time when a district officer of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) assessed the cooperative a hefty P1.7M tax due threatening to sue and saying that if found liable, he could go to jail. He insisted that cooperatives are tax exempt and with the support of then Legal Counsel Simplicio Caguay, he stood his ground until the BIR official stopped bothering them. Emilio surmised that it was an extortion operandi. And yes another low point in his career was when a director demanded that he resign if he could not cope with the Board’s wishes. That happened 1999 when he recommended the closure of the outpatient clinic of the cooperative because it was losing heavily.
The long and short of it was since its infancy, the cooperative had been Emilio’s passion and obsession. He stood by the cooperative through thick and thin so that he could now look back with satisfaction at the fruits of his labors and sacrifices.
It’s no mean feat that as of 2013, of the then 23,677 cooperatives in the country, the TAFAMULCO was ranked 233rd asset-wise. With its asset reaching P202M this year, it is possible that it has climbed up the standings. Emilio is not claiming credit for the success of the cooperative far from it but is content with the knowledge that during the crucial times of its life specially during its infancy, he was there to contribute what he could.
Emilio says that he feels deep in his heart that his labors in the near three decades was all worth it when he hears some cooperative members say that they would still be hard up financially had it not been for the loans made available by the TAFAMULCO which helped them improve their economic conditions.
Pressed for more comments along this line, the usually reticent Emilio said: “I went to Malacanang and received from President Ramos the “Best Coop Citizen” award from the Land Bank of the Philippines. I have seen many places in the Philippines and have been to Vietnam, Beijing, China and Cambodia all because of my involvement in cooperatives. I enjoy my work even if the pay is low. Without my wife’s business, I may have also tried going abroad as I also have obligations to my family.”
A major part of that obligation is the education of their two children: Friedrich and Caroline. Friedrich had just graduated with the degree of BS Math from the Cagayan State University in 2014 and Caroline is fourth year in BS Psychology also at the CSU.
But wait a minute. Who is the wife of Emilio? It’s Jovita Dalayon, the former Storekeeper of the TAFAMULCO. They got married in April 1991 less than a year after she became an employee of the cooperative. Jovita resigned right after their marriage and had established a dry goods store at the Tabuk Public Market. In a way, Jovita is one of Emilio’s “rewards” for working for TAFAMULCO.
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!
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