Help track schools damaged by Yolanda, public asked

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) on Friday asked the public for help in tracking public schools damaged by Typhoon Yolanda.

In its Twitter account, the DepEd said people could share through their Facebook or Twitter accounts information about the school including its name, location and picture, and then tag the DepEd.

The DepEd also urged the public to help rebuild the lives of the teachers and field personnel of the department who were affected by Yolanda.

“Our teachers and field personnel are always present and ready to help us in times of calamities. Despite their own losses due to Typhoon Yolanda, they stand tall for others. Let’s us rebuild the lives of our heroes,” DepEd said in appealing for donations for the typhoon victims.

The DepEd earlier mobilized its staff at the Central Office in Pasig City to track personnel in the Visayas who were injured or went missing during the onslaught of Yolanda last Nov. 8.

DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro has also directed public elementary and high schools to accept “emergency transferees” from areas devastated by the typhoon.

Ormoc classes to resume Dec. 2

In Ormoc City, school divisions superintendent Mariza Magan yesterday told journalists that classes in all public and secondary schools would resume on Dec. 2.

Most private schools in the area will also resume on the same date, she said.

According to Magan, students will not be compelled to use their school uniforms yet but are required to wear identification cards (IDs) for security purposes.

Those who lost their IDs are advised to secure new cards.

A shifting in classes has also been proposed to cope with the lack of classrooms since many were damaged during the typhoon.

Tents would also be established to serve as temporary classrooms, Magan said.

She initially issued an order to suspend classes for a maximum of two weeks after Yolanda ravaged the city.

‘Safe Schools’ campaign launched

The Philippines and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) launched on Thursday a new “Safe Schools” campaign to raise public awareness and build social demand for safety checks, disaster preparedness, and school education on disaster risk reduction.

The initiative was launched even as the country continues to deal with the many humanitarian needs left behind by Typhoon Yolanda,  including the fact that thousands of children are unable to return to schools as over 600 schools have been destroyed and 1.7 million children have lost their homes.

Margareta Wahlström, the head of UNISDR, helped launch the initiative which will target 48,000 public schools, with Education Undersecretary Dina Ocampo, Sen. Loren Legarda and UNDP country director, Tohishiro Tanaka.

The new program is designed to build social demand for preliminary safety assessments of schools in disaster-prone countries like the Philippines. â€“ With Lalaine Jimenea

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�|����ponding increase in capacity brought about by the assistance from the DA’s HVCDP.

“These PPPs of a different kind at the community level add up to contribute significantly to the economy through a reversed approach – or from micro to macro-scale,” Alcala explained.

“This (bottom-up) approach is also the DA’s strategy in ‘communitizing’ national development. We do it, not by cascading resources down to the marginalized sectors, but by starting everything right where they are.  They just have to do their part in this partnership for nationbuilding,” Alcala stressed.

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(����ented by farm-to-market roads, cheap prices of fertilizers, additional and latest inputs on sugar production, upgrade of sugar mills, diversifiy power sources  as these could  help improve production efficiency and  lower production costs, he said.

Coscolluela, a former SRA chief and governor of Negros Occidental, noted that the sugar industry is ‘running on its own steam’ as it subsidizes the research and development, anti-smuggling drive and even finances the SRA without  help from the government.

In Thailand, its government taxes  local sugar by as much as seven percent, but the tax collected is plowed back to the farmers through the cane and sugar fund purposely to improve their competitiveness, Coscolluela said.

Here in the Philippines, the former SRA head said, instead of the government helping the sugar industry, it even extracts more from the beleaguered industry by slapping  a 12 percent VAT on processed sugar.

Other sugar groups’ representatives also spoke on the needs of the sugar industry.

Villar assured her office would collate all the suggestions, feedbacks, and insights and these would be taken into consideration in the crafting of the proposed Senate bill.

She vowed to help the sugar industry become competitive.

Villar intends to hold two or three more public hearings to extensively discuss the salient points of the bill, and to form a technical working group to draft the bill before the year ends.

Rep. Alfredo Benitez (Negros Occidental, 3rd District)  re-filed a similar bill in the Lower House last May. It is entitled the Sugarcane Industry Development Act.