‘Araw ng Pasasalamat’ honors 40,000 OFWs’ families

The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) Friday announced that 40,000 families of the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in 17 regions will be given tribute on Monday during the Migrant Worker…

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‘Araw ng Pasasalamat’ honors 40,000 OFWs’ families

Filed under: Kwentong OFW, OFW Corner, Araw ng Pasasalamat honors 40000 OFWs families

Collection efficiency ng BIR patuloy na tumataas

by: Bennie A. Recebido, PIA-Sorsogon

Masayang inihayag ni Bureau of Internal Revenue District Officer Arturo Abenoja na nagpapatuloy ang magandang performance ng BIR Sorsogon ukol sa koleksyon ng buwis sa pagpasok nitong 2nd quarter ng taon.

Sinabi ni Abenoja na mas tumataas at maaaring lumampas sa target ang koleksyon nila ng buwis ngayong 2nd quarter kumpara nitong nakaraang 1st quarter at maging sa koleksyon ng BIR noong 2nd quarter ng 2009.

“Nito lamang buwan ng Abril ay mahigit na sa isang milyong piso ang nakokolekta ng BIR Sorsogon. At sakaling bumaba man ang koleksyon nitong Mayo ay kumpyansa pa rin kami na kayang-kayang punan ito ng aming koleksyon noong Abril,” pahayag pa ni Abenoja.

Subalit, binigyang-diin niya na malabo na ring bumaba ang koleksyon sa buwan ng Mayo bagkus ay tataas pa ito dahilan sa mga proyektong inihahabol pang maisagawa ng mga lokal na pamahalaan kung saan may mga budget na ring nakalaan at tanging ang pagpapatupad na lamang ang hinihintay.

“Ang pagtaas na ito ng aming koleksyon ay utang namin sa mga mamamayan na sa ngayon ay mas bukas na sa panawagan ng BIR ukol sa tamang pagbabayad ng buwis at paghingi ng resibo sa mga transaksyon nito,” ayon pa sa kanya.

Dagdag din niya na base sa kanilang obserbasyon, maging ang mga may negosyo dito ay boluntaryo na ring nagbibigay ng mga resibo sa mga mamimili.

Kaugnay nito, positibo si Abenoja na magiging maganda ang itatakbo ng kanilang koleksyon sa buwis ngayong taon.

Filed under: Sorsogon News Updates

Castilla steps up hardened chick venture

by: DJMarantal, SSC/PIA Sorsogon

The Sorsogon State College (SSC) has proposed a 300-hen level Hardened Chick Production Enterprise which aims to meet the increasing demand of genetically raised for its meat and eggs and provides students and newly graduates additional knowledge on the establishment and management of the enterprise.

SSC President Antonio Fuentes said that the project has a total capital requirement of Php 606,350.41, seventy-nine percent of which (or Php 481,800.00) was financed by the Bicol University Equity Fund and the rest of the 21 percent (or Php125,550.41) came from the SSC Counter-part Fund.

The project is located at the SSC-Castilla Campus at Mayon, Castilla, Sorsogon which is a strategic place for the project operation due to its accessibility to any land transportation.

“The project will maintain 300 hen and 60 rooster breeders for a span of two years and will be replaced every two years,” he added.

The hardened chicks are seventy-five days old, hatched out of the breeders and which maybe artificially or naturally incubated and brooded. Because of the hardening stage, native chickens are prepared for a harsh life and are highly adaptable to conditions such as insufficient feeds, lack of shelter, weather disturbances, and diseases in small farms.

Products such as the hardened chicks are to be marketed three months after the start of operation.

According to Fuentes priority target buyers include selected faculty members, students and graduates of SSC Castilla Campus, and farmer clients and linkages implementing the agricultural development program in their localities.

“Some of the products will also be allocated for the establishment and operation of native chicken for meat and eggs production of the campus administration. Participation of students and graduates would be ensured by giving them the opportunity to gain knowledge in managing the project through on-the-job immersion,” he explained.

Fuentes further said that students and graduates who seek alternative sources of income may take into consideration the hardened chick production as their income generating project.

“Following the business plan, the project is recommended because it is relatively profitable,” he said.

Filed under: Sorsogon News Updates

BFAR nanawagan sa mga LGUs na ipatupad ang RA8550

by: Bennie A. Recebido, PIA-Sorsogon

Nanawagan si BFAR Provincial Fisheries Officer Gil Ramos sa mga Local Government Units na mahigpit na ipatupad ang Republic Act 8550 o ang Batas Pampangisdaan ng 1998.

Ayon kay Ramos ilan sa mga suliraning hanggang sa kasalukyan ay hindi pa rin nabibigyang-solusyon ay ang paglabag sa mga ipinagbabawal na gawaing pampangisdaan kung kaya’t umaapela siya sa mga opisyal ng Local Government Units na mahigpit na ipatupad ang batas na sumasaklaw dito.

“Kabilang sa mga ipinagbabawal na gawaing pampangaisdaan ay ang paggamit ng pampasabog, kuryente, superlight, fine meshed net, active gear at muro-ami, pagkuha ng mga puting buhangin, conversion ng mga bakawan, paglabag sa itinakdang dami ng huhulihing lamang-dagat, polusyon sa katubigan, panghuhuli at pag-export ng mga korales at, iba pang mga gawaing makapipinsala sa tirahan at buhay ng mga lamang-dagat,” pagbibigay-diin ni Ramos.

Samantala, sinabi ni Ramos na handa ang kanilang tanggapan na magbigay-tulong sa mga LGU sa pamamagitan ng pagpapahiram ng mga model ordinances at pagreview sa mga batas pampangisdaan na nais ipasa ng mga lokal na pamahalaan dito.

“Balak din naming maupo sa sesyon ng mga Sangguniang Bayan at Lungsod upang i-orient ang mga ito at i-review ang mga kaukulang batas na makakatulong upang mapangalagaan ang mga katubigan at programang pampangisdaan ng pamahalaan,” pahayag pa niya.

Filed under: Sorsogon News Updates

Sorsogon Gears up for La Niña

by: Bennie A Recebido, PIA-Sorsogon

While everyone experience the occasional rainfall and high rise of temperature the past days, the Sorsogon Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC) is preparing measures and strategies to mitigate the impacts of La Niña expected to bring excessive rainfall.

La Niña, sometimes called “El Viejo” or cold event, is the counterpart of the climate phenomenon El Niño which results to more than normal rainfall and typhoons especially of stronger characteristics.

Provincial Public Safety and Disaster Management Office (PPSDMO) Information Officer Manro Jayco of PDCC Sorsogon said that the local disaster response office is currently in the process of conducting follow-up to previously trained Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) municipal officers across the province as part of their mitigation plan in case Sorsogon will directly be hit by excessive rainfall brought about by the phenomenon.

“We are also preparing to orient newly elected officials and Municipal Disaster Coordinating Council action officers if ever there will be new appointees, in order to make them more effective and efficient disaster managers,” Jayco said.

“We will also strengthen the performance of our rain gauge monitoring officers especially in the three identified flood-prone areas in the province, namely Barangays Incarizan in Magallanes, Cogon in Irosin and Banuang Gurang in Donsol, so that they could provide us accurate information relevant to our disaster preparation activities” he added.

Meanwhile, the Sorsogon PDCC has already started doing rounds in areas considered low-lying and flood prone including the coastal areas in different municipalities here to give information and warn DRR leaders on the ill-effects that La Niña may bring.

It can be noted that PAGASA disclosed that frequent precipitations may be experienced in the month of July. (BARecebido, PIA Sorsogon)

Filed under: Sorsogon News Updates

NO SURPRISE IN NEWS OF OFWS’ POVERTY

The story on our front page yesterday did not surprise anybody who has been watching the labor-export phenomenon in our country.    

     

Father Edwin Corros, the executive secretary of the Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said 60 percent of the families of migrant Filipinos remain poor. These are relatives of unskilled Overseas Filipino Workers. They end up with nothing when the OFW breadwinners come home. They have no savings. They have not been able to put aside a portion of the monthly remittances from abroad to start and maintain a business.

They have no savings because the poor Filipinos, so used to their hand-to-mouth existence day-after-day, have not developed the savings habit that even the poor in China, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia have. The Philippines are only better than the Burmese and the Cambodians when it comes to the people’s savings rate.

The absence of social security, healthcare insurance and government or charity-institution subsidies for health care for the poor also contributes to the poverty and zero-savings of these OFW families. For even the families that do have the savings habit can only save ever so little. When serious illness strikes them, all their puny savings go to defray the cost of hospitalization and medicine. When the afflicted member of the family dies, burial expenses become the funding problem.

   A bit of good news from the ILO

 The International Labor Organization (ILO) has awarded P4 million to an insurance company—Pioneer Life Inc.—for its innovative project: the “Pamilyang OFW Savers and Wellness Club.” Pioneer Life Inc. was among 18 ILO grantees. There were 200 applicants.    

The Pamilyang OFW Savers and Wellness Club was organized under the auspices of Fr. Corro’s CBCP commission, the ECMI, short for the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (ECMI). The aim is to encourage workers and their families to wisely manage their finances.    

The program encourages each family to develop the habit of saving and build enough savings to allow for the early return of OFWs to their families.    

Launched in July 2009, the OFW Savers and Wellness Club is now in six dioceses and has 900 members.
They participate in financial literacy workshops. Their savings in the Club get higher interest rates than in ordinary banks. They have personal accident insurance and life insurance policies, get cash assistance for burial, and have privileges from corporations that have become partners of the club.    

The paucity of help from other sectors—including the government—makes projects like this between organs of the Catholic Church and the private sector an important preserver of stability and order in the Philippines. Without such projects, there would be more desperate poverty and discontent.    

The participation of dioceses of the Catholic Church and the ECMI commission of the CBCP in these projects provide the insurance companies a comforting assurance that things will go well.    

Reintegration of returned OFWs    

The OFW Savers and Wellness Club project, Fr. Corros explained, is part of the reintegration program the Catholic Church has been pursuing for OFWs. Fr. Corros, at the launching of the Pioneer Life project Monday, repeated an observation frequently aired by critics of the Department of Labor and Employment’s agencies tasked with looking after the so-called heroes whose remittances make up the most solid pillar of the Philippine economy.    

The priest said, “The government has not introduced a doable reintegration program.”    

Government action to help OFWs reintegrate themselves into the domestic workforce is mere lip service, people who know the situation—like the OFWs themselves and such concerned leaders as Susan Ople of the Blas Ople Policy Center—assert.    

The DOLE’s Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) is supposed to have a bureau devoted to assisting returned OFWs to reintegrate. But the office has no proper head whose duty is to operate reintegration programs and be accountable for failure to do so.    

The OWWA has billions of pesos. But OFWs, who pay US$25 to become current OWWA members each time they have a new contract with an employer, complain that it does not adequately promote their welfare.    

Open letter from OFWs    

Last week, OFWs from various countries, wrote an open letter to future president Noynoy Aquino.    

They comprehensively reviewed the Philippine migration situation. They recounted how “Migration gains are mainly remittances by overseas Filipinos to their family members, which are now in the region of US$17 billion and are the primary source of livelihood for millions of Philippine households. At 10.8 percent of the country’s GDP, they are also the third biggest source of the country’s foreign currency reserves and act as primary driver for our economy, shielding us from bankruptcy during the financial crisis in 1997 and the current one.    

“The Filipino diaspora, estimated now at about 10 million working or residing in 239 countries and territories worldwide, send back donations to various humanitarian causes, such as disaster–relief, medical missions, schoolhouses, and other infrastructure.” In addition many OFWs have actually made investments in real estate and entrepreneurial ventures here.    

But the OFWs pointed out the social costs of the OFW phenomenon.    

Their main message to future president Aquino is something all rational Filipinos know: That the OFW program, the export of Filipino talent and warm bodies abroad, must not be a permanent development strategy of the government. It must only be seen as a stopgap measure. Mr. Aquino’s administration must, as he himself has promised, work to make the Philippines have the jobs in industries, agribusiness and agri-industry, and other areas so that Filipinos will no longer be forced to work abroad.    

Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/component/content/article/83-opinion-columnist/18765-no-surprise-in-news-of-ofws-poverty    

 

 

Filed under: Kwentong OFW, OFW Corner, Overseas Jobs, What's Happening Here?, no surprise in news of OFW poverty, NO SURPRISE IN NEWS OF OFWS POVERTY

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Filed under: Sorsogon News Updates