by anyajulia | Oct 19, 2009 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita
THE first public school in Catigbian’s Santo Nino parish rises miraculously from rice lands in a nook in Hagbuaya village, this came after local officials led by Mayor Roberto Salinas asked for it from the Department of Education (DepED).
The new public secondary school would be the first one to serve constituents in the nine villages within the Baang parish catch-ment.
Most of the public schools in this town are established within the Immaculate Mary Parish catch-ment and putting up one public school accessible to the people in Baang excites us, claimed education committee chair and Councilor Zip Lastimosa recently.
The plan took a dizzying turn when the DepEd nodded to it, after only three weeks of processing, he said.
Mayor Salinas said this might even be the shortest time for a school application to gain its base, one tough gamble they took when they opened first and second year high school classes at the nearby Hagbuaya Elementary School, even while submitting their application papers.
He said the town also shouldered the eventual pay for the teachers contracted to manage the classes.
With the DepED green-lighting the project, local officials doubled up and successfully sourced out up at least four two-classroom buildings to transform the lot into a veritable school compound as the school year opens next year, Salinas bared.
The favorable DepEd action also enthused residents to ride with the momentum: Juan Tagsa and his family allocated a hectare of property and transferred it without cost in favor of the government for the school buildings and compound.
The local government dipped half a million from its coffers for the ground leveling and surface stabilization for the hectare-wide lot to house the compound.
The Provincial Government through the Governor Erico Aumentado and Vice Governor Julius Caesar Herrera pitched in P1.2M worth of two 2-classroom buildings from its special education fund sources.
Taking the bandwagon is District Representative Edgar Chatto who also pledged funds for another 2 classroom building set to rise anytime soon, reported Salinas who stopped by for the inspection after passing through form a meeting in Bilar.
Well meaning Filipino Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry also intimated putting up another two classroom building one that would be ready for occupancy in June 2010, Salinas said. (PIA)
by anyajulia | Oct 16, 2009 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita
BOTH League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) Bohol Chapter and the local Commission on Audit (COA) have to admit the pre-audit requirement is becoming more of a hassle than help, making them victims of another systemic government flaw.
Bohol LMP President Roberto Salinas called the requirement for all government transactions to get through pre-audit a huge blow against the government efforts to deliver quick and efficient service.
Now implemented as a policy before any government procurement transaction is consummated, the new pre-audit requirement has altered the usual government procurement processing with circuitous paper trails, town liaison officers with COA say.
Bohol COA supervising auditor Marcelita Sarmiento, who defended the government through the benefits of the pre-audit law has to concede however that the pre-audit has added so much to their overloaded functions considering the local office is undermanned.
She told the mayors that COA Bohol that only 24 auditors are overseeing the cash-books of 47 towns, a city and several government agencies including Capitol.
“An auditor has to take about 7 towns, national agencies, special projects…as much as we would like to, it would take us time to do pre-audit,” she explained.
She also blamed some town auditors who send in incomplete documents further compounding the procedural delay.
It is true that pre-audit takes time, but we are governed by laws, she reiterated over the apparently helplessness the local chief executives showed over the policy.
In fact, Salinas called the policy one that molds the impression that mayors are shrugging shoulders on anti-red tape law with the illogical delays in the delivery of services.
“We can just imagine the waste of time, manpower and resources while we at our levels desperately need to keep up with fast, effective and responsive government,” he said.
On the pre-audit requirement, Maribojoc Mayor Leoncio Evasco blurted out that [pre-audit] is all right, but implemented by an agency, which does not have the capability, it is something else.
“Why insist [on it] when they could not do it? he asked.
Sarmiento reasoned out that COA implements, despite a move to raise the issue to COA top echelons.
She hinted then that without the directive stopping them from doing their jobs, they have to follow.
Meeting midway, the mayors asked the COA to give to them checklists for the pre-audit requirements while a promising that a parallel move would be initiated to lobby for the eventual reassessment on the policy. (PIA)
by anyajulia | Oct 16, 2009 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita
NO one is so poor so as to have nothing to give.
Even poverty saddled towns here in Bohol dipped from its scant coffers to fill their relief bag of cash and contribute to the estimated P2.85 million fund for victims of storms Ondoy and Pepeng.
Mayor Roberto Salinas reported during the recent League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) meeting hosted by municipality of Bilar that about P1.6M has already been hand carried by Governor Erico Aumentado to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) last week.
If the towns respond as we proposed with our equitable formula, we would be generating at least P2.85 million from the LMP alone, he said.
With the LMP still collecting the cash assistance from the towns, Salinas told his mayors that the formula the league devised is just to put up a common guide for the amount a town can give. He added, a town can definitely give more.
As to the formula for the financial relief, he said the LMP decided that first to third class towns put in P100K each, while fourth to sixth class towns can give P50K.
Last week too, according to records from the Office of the Provincial Treasurer through Eustaquio Socorin, the towns of Buenavista, Calape, Carmen, Jagna, Talibon, Tubigon, Ubay and President Carlos P. Garcia each gave P100K.
Among them, lower classified President town of Carlos P. Garcia gave more that its category.
Towns who gave P50 thousand each are the towns of Alburquerque, Alicia, Baclayon, Balilihan, Candijay, Catigbian and Clarin, Cortes, Danao, Mabini, Maribojoc, Panglao, Pilar, Sagbayan, and Valencia.
Inabanga initially gave P75K, Sikatuna, P30, Dagohoy P30 and Lila P10K.
Sikatuna Mayor Ireneo Calimpusan, Dagohoy Mayor Herminio Relampagis and Lila Mayor Telesforo Balagosa said they would send in the full amounts in the next batch of financial relief envelop from Bohol to be sent this week.
The urgency of pooling a relief fund from Bohol popped up as local officials saw the poor victims of the successive storms that left some parts of Metro Manila and nearby provinces under water at the height of storm Ondoy.
Seeing the need to help, Salinas said he took the initiative to send text messages to his fellow mayors to pool whatever is available to help.
He admitted that although it was informal way of seeking a common and immediate help to the victims from Bohol, he was enthused further by the quick response.
He said some mayors decided to appropriate funds immediately even without the national state of calamity declaration yet. (PIA)
by anyajulia | Oct 16, 2009 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita
THE Abatan River Management and Development Council (ARMDC) assured it would ascertain that any decision involving development affecting their common river resource would emanate from the people.
ARMDC Chairman and Catigbian Mayor Roberto Salinas told the media in a press conference for the Visayaswide Local and Regional Economic Development Forum here a5t the MetroCenter Hotel that their next step in the Abatan cluster is to come up with a river code that would detail the policies an investor will have to follow to use the river for their investments.
The LRED Forum took on Accelerating Economic Development through the Cluster Approach as a theme.
The forum also opened up a venue for Abatan River Cluster towns in Bohol and the South Maqueda Bay cluster in Southern Leyte to be the development planners’ focus for generating models for cluster development replicas for the country, explains Department of Trade and Industry Regional Director Asteria Caberte.
The ARMDC is undertaking the development and promotion of the eco-tourism potential of the common resource shared by Cortes, Maribojoc, Antequera, Balilihan and Catigbian as a ladder for economic development in the area.
All these initiatives are bound by a common theme: environment protection and conservation through participative and sustainable eco-tourism, Salinas added.
The ARMDC believes that only by participative cluster development can they be assured of pooling common resources to make scant government development funds go farther.
Salinas reacted to the information that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has granted a mining concession in the mountains belonging to the Abatan watershed.
Another source bared that in the apparent belief of accelerated development, processes were cut short jeopardizing communities consent and violating government environmental compliance rules.
Salinas, who admitted knowing nothing about the mining grant, he it should unite the cluster towns into signifying a strong opposition to the claim.
He added the ARMDC would convene with the five mayors and the key development planners to lay down the guidelines to assure a no-nonsense grass-root participation in development plans.
The LRED, Salinas explained, is one approach that should ensure that the communities are given the ample chance to decide for their own resource utilization and it should be a sublime rule that should be an over-arching.
The LRED, promoted and facilitated by the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Private Sector Promotion Program of the German Development Corporation (GTZ) and adopted by the ARMDC is a bottom-up participatory planning process that builds on the comparative and competitive advantages of the local government units, a prepared material from the forum organizers bared. (PIA)
by anyajulia | Oct 16, 2009 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita
THE blaze of police transformation spreads here as the local cops led by PSSUpt Edgardo Ingking vowed never to succumb to political pressures hindering the growth of the culture of reform to make police render more capable, effective and credible service.
During the culmination of the 11th leg of the Torch Run Relay, Ingking said that the transformation torch would be the beacon that carries the light signifying the transformation program the Philippine National Police (PNP) has to undergo to make itself an organization that would compete globally.
The Transformation Torch, which traveled all over Bohol, according to reports came into Bohol last October 12 and was passed to every station to bring the beacon of transformation across the country, police sources explained.
From a sagging perception and a performance that scraped rock bottom, top leaders of the police organization has to push for the reforms that would unseat abusive, arrogant and unfit cops and ease them out of public service.
With police inefficiency reports hurting most of the men in uniform, the local officers welcome the move knowing that only with the reforms can the police reclaim its rightful seat as the people’s servants and protectors.
Briefing over three hundred men and women of the Bohol police manning town stations, Ingking, who claims the charges are only examples of the threats every police officer has to face and overcome to realize the real transformation also cited highlights and gains of the integrated police transformation which started in 2005.
During the briefing which took him an hour and a few minutes, Ingking shared to the police the vision of a police force in 2030: one that would be globally competitive, capable, effective and credible.
We hope that the torch inspire, motivate and encourage our men and women in the force never to lose hope, press ona nd run the race towards genuine police transformation, Ingking added.
The Integrated Transformation Program has done things, he said and cited that recent surveys results showed that the police has slowly gained immensely from a baseline performance.
Now, the PNP is the 6th best performing government agency, Ingking prided, adding that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has even commended the police force during their anniversary in January this year.
We are slowly regaining the claim and we are making sure that by 2030, every police officer in the service would be sitting side-by-side with their foreign counterparts, a police officer who asks not to be identified shared his vision. (PIA)
