It may surprise people to know that Ramon Ang grew up in Tondo and graduated from engineering in Far Eastern University, not from any of those famous Ivy League schools in the US
This column’s “Person of the Year,” without question goes to Ramon S. Ang, Chairman and Chief Executive of the country’s most diversified and largest conglomerate, San Miguel Corporation.
Undoubtedly, SMC has become the most diversified conglomerate, having gone beyond its core business in brewery and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and foods to infrastructure, banking, airports, tourism and hotels.
SMC is also into expressways (the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEX), the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR), South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), the Skyway System, and the NAIA Expressway (NAIAX).
It also has hundreds of Petron gas stations. Also included in its current portfolio are the Boracay Airport, the MRT-7 rail and road project, and the Bulacan Bulk Water Supply Project.
No less than the world’s foremost financial magazine, Fortune 500, has cited Ang for his philanthropic works for San Miguel’s billions of pesos efforts to clean the much polluted Pasig River, Metro Manila’s main waterway and its tributaries and adjoining rivers.
As of the latest count, SMC has dredged the river and its tributaries and adjoining rivers of no less than three billion tons of silt and garbage that made Pasig River almost non-passable through neglect and the fact that the river has become the recipient of much pollution because of factories near its banks.
Worse, the Pasig River had become the toilet bowl of informal settlers or squatters.
There were efforts before to clean the heavily and much polluted Pasig River until RSA made it San Miguel’s Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR, spending more than P3 billion of its funds without a peso from the government.
All it needed was the cooperation of the local government units (LGUs).
Soon enough, there will be a ferry service along the Pasig River to help ease Metro Manila’s heavily congested traffic.
San Miguel is even setting its sights on a more ambitious goal: cleaning up and rehabilitating three major river systems as well as other tributaries and waterways throughout Metro Manila, Pampanga, Cavite and Bulacan.
Dubbed as “SMC’s Adopt-a-River program,” the initiative is possibly the country’s biggest and most impactful corporate social responsibility effort in collaboration with the national and local governments.
SMC’s massive initiative covers the following:
River systems in Bulacan including the Meycauayan, Maycapiz-Taliptip, and Mailad Rivers, the Bambang Creek, Marilao River, Sta. Maria River, Guiguinto River, Pamarawan River, Labangon-Angat River, Malolos River and Hagonoy River;
Pampanga River; Maragondon River and other related tributaries in Cavite; Waterways in Navotas City, including Muzon River, Batasan River and the Navotas River; San Pedro River in Laguna; and the San Juan River.
Santa Banana, in my over seven decades as a journalist, possibly the only living journalist now at the age of 96, I have never seen efforts as massive and impactful as SMC’s, which will certainly stop so much flooding and loss of livelihood, which is the aim of this initiative.
With the effort of San Miguel to clean up all the esteros of Metro Manila, I can only imagine those days before World War II when I saw children diving in the clean esteros.
Now, they have become a big dumping ground for garbage and a big toilet bowl for the squatters living along those esteros.
Ramon S. Ang’s “Adopt-a-River Program” has even enticed the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to partner with SMC’s initiative to rehabilitate Luzon’s waterways.
I have nothing but admiration for RSA for making San Miguel what it is today.
This Christmas holiday, I have nothing but commendation and praise for RSA for my column’s “Person of the Year.” I couldn’t think of anyone but Ramon S. Ang.
It may surprise people to know that Ramon Ang grew up in Tondo and graduated from engineering in Far Eastern University, not from any of those famous Ivy League schools in the US.
It all began when the late Danding Cojuangco, chairman and CEO of San Miguel, took Ang in as his assistant.
The only common thing the two had was their love for vintage cars.