The Beginning of My Journey to Steel (Life)

It all started 33 years ago today on April 21, 1976 when barely a month after my graduation in college with a degree in Chemical Engineering from University of San Agustin in Iloilo City, I, together with 25 other young engineering graduates from prestigious schools in Visayas and Mindanao were formally welcomed to National Steel Corporation in Iligan City. We were selected from among thousands of other engineering graduates who survived the tough written and panel interviews. We were officially called Industrial Engineers assigned to the Industrial Engineering Department, an elite think tank of the company doing standards, methods, and economic analysis in practically all aspects of the business and operations of the company.

Our batch was indeed "star-studded". We were all honor graduates, with a summa and a number of magna, and cum laudes. For the next 18 years, I would stay with the company. We were honed and exposed in managerial, technical, human resource, training and organizational development, marketing, corporate planning, and financial and economic aspects of steel business. Many of us were trained abroad sponsored by JICA, AOTA, UNIDO/UNDP and equipment suppliers, plus our own company sponsored trainings and seminars. I myself had the privilege to undergo a four-month training in Russia and a two-month training at Bethlehem Steel in Indiana, USA. During those years, we were not just witnesses to the company's rise and fall but we were in fact actively involved in all of these endeavors, from concept to implementation and maintenance. Those of us who stayed longer spent perhaps our best years in our professional lives.

In the next few years, National Steel Corporation would recruit more IE's (and later on EMT's or engineering management trainees). This was in preparation for a larger operation of an integrated steel plant. This was a dream, conceptualized in the early 1950's by our predecessors and dreamed about by those who came later, us included. Sadly, until now, this remained a dream. And for those of us who experienced those glorious years of expansion and activities, it is utter disappointment and frustration to see how the steel industry in the Philippines has gone on a backward direction when most of our neighbors have gone a tremendous leap towards integration and industrialization.

Many of us are now in foreign soils, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc. A number are still left in the country, many in the Metro Manila area. This dream is the bond that binds us of our past, present and perhaps optimistic that in our generation, that dream will still be realized. THE DREAM LIVES ON.