Philippines

Batanes News October 2011

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Batanes Province

Wars of ancient history were about possessions, territory, power, control, family, betrayal, lover's quarrel, politics and sometimes religion.

But we are in the Modern era and supposedly more educated and enlightened .

Think about this. Don't just brush off these questions.

  • Why is RELIGION still involved in WARS? Isn't religion supposed to be about PEACE?
  • Ask yourself; What religion always campaign to have its religious laws be accepted as government laws, always involved in wars and consistently causing WARS, yet insists that it's a religion of peace?

WHY??

There are only two kinds of people who teach tolerance:
  1. The Bullies. They want you to tolerate them so they can continue to maliciously deprive you. Do not believe these bullies teaching tolerance, saying that it’s the path to prevent hatred and prejudice.
  2. The victims who are waiting for the right moment to retaliate. They can’t win yet, so they tolerate.
Oldest House in Ivana.jpg
Oldest house in Ivana, Batanes

Dietary supplement is a product that contains vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, enzymes, and/or other ingredients intended to supplement the diet. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has special labeling requirements for dietary supplements and treats them as foods, not drugs.

Manufacturers and distributors of dietary supplements and dietary ingredients are prohibited from marketing products that are adulterated or misbranded. That means that these firms are responsible for evaluating the safety and labeling of their products before marketing to ensure that they meet all the requirements of DSHEA and FDA regulations.

LGU-Basco orders closure of 2 food establishments

BASCO, Batanes- The local government unit here recently served closure order to two food establishments in this municipality due to sanitation violations and lack of business permit to operate based on the findings of the ConsumerNet-Batanes.

The food establishments are a secondary school canteen and a restaurant operating in Sitio Hunan Barangay San Joaquin which violated sanitation and business permit requirements respectively.

The monitoring activities which started last October 18 has already resulted to confiscations of expired goods such as canned goods, bottled products, noodles and junk foods from retailers in Barangay Kayhuvukan, Kayvaluganan and Sitio/ Barangay San Joaquin.

The team said most of the retailers who were monitored disclosed that their products came from two big general merchandisers in Basco while others were ordered through text messages from wholesalers based in Divisoria in Metro Manila.

The retailers admitted that they were not aware of the expiration dates of their commodities.

Two bakeries were also advised to improve windows and door screens, baking machine be covered with clear cloth when not in use and reserved drums of water properly covered.

The DOH representative also warned bakery owners not to allow their employees and customers to smoke inside and within the vicinity of the baking areas.

The team also confiscated pirated DVDs.

The monitoring team also oriented businessmen and consumers on Republic Act No.7394 or the Consumer Act of the Philippines.

DSWD launches regional database of nat’l household targeting system

As the mandated agency to provide social protection and anti-poverty programs and projects, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) continues to enhance and strengthen the capacity to meet the challenge through its National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).

The NHTS-PR is an information management system which is an initiative of the DSWD to further improve the service delivery systems to the public particularly to the poor.

Regional Director Arnel B. Garcia of DSWD Field Office 02 said the NHTS-PR will be used in identifying beneficiaries of social service programs of the government and lessen exclusion or under-coverage of the poor in social protection programs.

“The NHTS-PR facilitates the sharing of high quality database to public and private social protection stakeholders and reduces leakage of non-poor in social protection services,” Garcia added.

The director likewise said that although the government has limited resources, it could still have a unified, objective and transparent targeting system for the government to accurately distribute its resources and services to the real poor.

Through the NHTS-PR, poor households are identified using four phases the preparatory phase- selection of provinces, municipalities and cities and identification of data collection strategy; data collection and analysis phase - determination of poverty status; validation and finalization phase and; data report generation phase.

In the magnitude of poor households in the national level, region 2 is the second region with the least number of identified poor households at 118,118 for a percentage of 2.25%, Garcia noted.

Garcia disclosed that the highest number of poor households in region 2 comes from the province of Isabela at 54,678 while the lowest comes from the province of Batanes at 178.

But in terms of percentage, the highest comes from the province of Quirino with 35% while the lowest comes from the province of Batanes at 12%, he added.

NHTS-PR may be used by the LGUs and other stakeholders as reference in identifying beneficiaries of their social protection programs and services by entering into Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the DSWD to ensure that all data are used for the appropriate purposes and that the rights of the households are protected, he clarified.

Meanwhile, Dr. Robert T. Reyes, Philhealth regional vice president, thanked the DSWD for extending assistance to them in providing the list of poor families culled from NHTS-PR to ensure that accessible and quality health care is provided to underprivileged constituents of region 2.

The launching marked the 22nd celebration of National Statistics month which highlights social protection statistics with the theme, “Quality Social Protection Statistics for Focused Targeting: Improving Outcomes, Changing Lives.

House panel seeks to renegotiate IPP contracts

The House of Representatives Committee on Energy has approved a motion to prepare a resolution asking for the renegotiation of contracts with independent power producers (IPPs) in the country.

This was announced by Chairman Henedina Abad, representative of the lone district of Batanes during the hearing.

The same resolution is also supposed to ask that pending applications of the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) for a 39 centavo per kilowatthour universal charge be delayed.

The universal charge is a pass on charge to defray stranded costs of IPPs to cover the construction and maintenance of power plants.

The resolution covers contracts for 19 IPPs, 11 in Luzon, 3 in Visayas and 5 in Mindanao. The resolution seeks to either bring down power rates or for the government to buy out the investors.

The Department of Energy PSALM reported to the committee that the production cost of an IPP averages P20/kWh while it costs only P3/kwh average for other power plants.

It also estimated that the country may have overpaid by as much as US$10 billion due to the high IPP rates and may overpay by as much if this continues for another 10 years.

The amount is said to be equivalent to 10 1,000-MW power plants.

The Philippines now has the highest cost of electricity in Asia at 18.1 US cents/kwh, overtaking Japan’s 17.9 US cents/kwh.

Region 2 is top 2 nationwide in social pension implementation-DSWD

The Department of Social Welfare and Development in Region 2 (DSWD2) has completed the distribution of social pension to the indigent senior citizens in the entire region making it top 2 performer in the nationwide implementation of the government’s social pension program.

Lucia Alan, chief of the Technical Division of the DSWD said for the second quarter of this year, their office was able to release P8,433,000 to a total of 5,622 beneficiaries from the five provinces of region 2.

For Cagayan, a total of P3,732,000 has been disbursed to some 2,488 senior citizens; Isabela, P3,285,500 to 2,190; Nueva Vizcaya, P717,000 to 478, Quirino, P685,000 to 457 and Batanes, P13,500 to nine (9) senior citizens.

She added that indigent senior citizens, aged 77 years old and above have been identified through the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).

“Only those indigent seniors aged 77 years old and above, who are not receiving any pension from the Government Service Insurance System, Social Security System, Armed Forces of the Philippines and other insurance company, without permanent source of income, or regular support from his/her relatives shall be included in the program,” Alan further explained.

Alan stressed that DSWD social workers have conducted verification and validation of eligible senior citizens who are qualified to receive a monthly social pension of P500.00 to be distributed on a quarterly basis.

The provision of monthly pension for indigent senior citizens is in-line with the fulfillment of the obligation of the government to protect the most vulnerable sector through social protection and for the full implementation of Republic Act 9994 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010.

The P500 monthly pension will help the family augment the daily subsistence and other medical needs of indigent seniors particularly those who are sickly and bedridden.

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