DAGUPAN CITY—Please adopt a Lebanon overseas Filipino worker (OFW) returnee
and help save lives.

Delfina Camarillo, officer-in-charge of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration regional center for Luzon, made this appeal and said this could be a philanthropic act of recruitment agencies that could be Good Samaritans for these evacuated OFWs from war-torn Lebanon.

These recruitment agencies will help a lot these OFWs if they will have a No Placement Fee Policy enforced, she said. “We hope we could have a unified effort to help the victims of war,” she said referring to the repatriated OFWs. One or two OFWs who could be given free placement fee by the 1,700 recruitment agencies would mean a lot, she said.

Despite their harrowing and sad stories, about 10 per cent of evacuated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Lebanon who are from the Ilocos region expressed intent for redeployment abroad, Camarillo told local newsmen last week during the Pangasinan Tri-Media Association Kapihan here. She said the bottom line for the need to leave the country and work abroad again is perhaps poverty. She said these OFWs have children who are yet to finish college.

She added that they have appealed to various employment agencies to do this “act of sacrifice”.

Marivic Mondina, officer-in-charge of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in region 1, also said that as of August 22, there were 544 Lebanon evacuees from region 1 who have returned to the country. These are from La Union (102), Ilocos Sur (143), Ilocos Norte (61), Pangasinan (243) and four others with incomplete address.

As per OWWA records, there were 2,025 OFWs deployed in Lebanon who are from
the Ilocos region. Of this number, 877 are from Pangasinan, 417 from La Union, 467 from Ilocos Sur and 264 from Ilocos Norte. Common problems of these OFWs were non-payment of salaries/remaining salaries were unclaimed, underpayment of contracted salary from $200 to $150 only, among others.

To date the OWWA in the region has assisted 344 families of OFWs.

BAYAMBANG, Pangasinan—The kusinero (cook) who prepared the food that made about 130 people “poisoned” including children from barangay Amancosiling Norte here is nowhere in sight for investigation.

Mayor Leocadio de Vera Jr toldthis writer in a phone interview that he and Dr. Paz Vallo, municipal health officer, went to the said barangay last Saturday to conduct probe to find out what went wrong with the food served.

This after 122 people were treated in various clinics and hospitals here since Friday as out-patients, with another eight confined due to severe headache, body weakening, diarrhea, and vomiting.

De Vera said the number of afflicted people could have been more but were ashamed to come out because they were being teased by others for being ponsyano (a Pangasinan word that refers to someone who eats with gusto in any party, with or without invitation).

Initial investigation showed that the people ate pork dishes like egado and adobo served in a house where a novena prayer marking the Filipino’s traditional event for the end of grief for the death of a person locally known as “bakas”.

“We want to know what went wrong with the food preparation why the people who partook of the food served fell ill but the cook is nowhere to be found,” de Vera said.

He said he learned that the cook is from barangay Boayaen here but it looks like he’s hiding.  Vallo said they got samples of the food for laboratory examination today at
the Bureau of Food and Drugs.

The town health officials immediately gave medicines to contain the disease and prevent dehydration. Luckily, no one died from the food poisoning.

DAGUPAN CITY–Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said that Church law categorically forbids clerics from assuming any public office whenever this means having a share in the exercise of civil power.

Cruz issued this statement after no less than Batanes Bishop Camilo Gregorio, appointed by President Arroyo to be member of the special investigative body she formed called Melo Commission to probe spate of killings of left-wing activists and journalists, requested that he be replaced Tuesday.

The commission headed by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo will also have as its members National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Nestor Mantaring, Chief State Prosecutor Jovencio Zuno, Catholic Bishop Camilo Gregorio, Senior Counsel Vinluan, and Atty. Nelia Gonzales, representing the legal and academic community.

Gergorio earlier expressed willingness to be part of the commission created by the President last Monday.

Cruz, former president of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, said that this universal church law prohibition applies to all deacons, priests and bishops of the Catholic Church in the four corners of the globe.

"The law is quite strict and rigid such that any cleric who entertains a definite and defined contrary option, should terminally leave the clerical state", he said.

He said that the so called “Melo Commission” is definitely neither a purely private nor civil body.

"As designed and constituted by no less than the highest executive office holder in the land, it is incongruous to even think that it has nothing to do with the exercise of civil power in its executive expression in other words, all clerics in the country are forbidden by church law from membership in the said commission as such," he said.

”Hopefully, this canonical prohibition would assuage the apparent paranoidal preoccupation of the present administration that clerics in the country like to take over its tenure of power, intent to assume its public office and pursuant prerogatives”, Cruz said.

"Would that the said church law put to rest the seemingly progressive self-agitation of Malacañang that the local Pilipino church hierarchy is interested in changing its occupant due to its design and desire to have a presence therein," he added.

He noted that it is not only the fundamental law of the land that indirectly provides the separation of the church and state. The universal law of the church also affirms its separation from the state is inherently for church ministry-definitely not for government service, he added.

It is strange that the present administration fervently invokes the principle of the separation of church and state whenever clerics denounce the unethical contents of its political options and actions, Cruz said.

"Yet the same is rather fast in enlisting no less than bishops for membership in the said commission that is envisioned precisely to investigate and resolve political killings in the country," he added.

Cruz said, "What a self-contradiction!”

DAGUPAN CITY–There is no stopping the Krusada ng Bayan Laban sa Sugal in its fight against the seemingly unstoppable jueteng operations in the country.

In a telephone interview with this reporter, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said the Krusada, formerly known as Krusada ng Bayan Laban sa Jueteng which he chairs, launched Friday at the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) office in Manila two anti-gambling materials, a concise
educational publication and brief revealing video.

Cruz, a former CBCP president and a staunch anti-jueteng advocate, said the first is the “Primer on Gambling 2006” in general, be this legal or illegal.

He said it says what is gambling, what is wrong with gambling, what are the popular forms of gambling, and what are the arguments purportedly in favor of gambling.

He added that the second is a video clearly showing how cheating is done specifically in Jueteng-with the intervention of Mr. Boy Mayor who was a former master Jueteng operator.

Mayor, who turned witness against his former allies in the jueteng circle during the unfinished Senate jueteng probe, remains under the care of Cruz and other supporters of the Krusada .

Cruz said in the video, the cheating or manipulation is demonstrated by an actual “bolador”, i.e., someone who to this date still draws the so called “winning numbers” of Jueteng. He said the numbers drawn are pre- determined by the findings of the “revisador”. This “employee” of every Jueteng operator knows what numbers have the least bets and should be wherefore made to win, he added.

The senior prelate said in the 23 January 2005 "Statement on Gambling", the CBCP took notice of the increasingly serious problem caused by gambling in the country.

He said for this reason, CBCP made the three following key pronouncements: One, CBCP considers all forms of legal and illegal gambling as morally undesirable and acceptable specially so when they are corporate, syndicated or organized. Two, the CBCP looks at the culture of gambling as seriously erosive of the moral fiber of people customarily engaging in it. Three, the CBCP considers it necessary to make a collective anti-gambling policy,
endorsing the truth that the end does not justify the means—such as gambling for charity as loudly and repeatedly claimed by PAGCOR (Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation), PCSO (Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office) and Jueteng operators.

Cruz said the cited CBCP statement accordingly inspired the recent establishment of the “Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Sugal” side by side with the organization of already longexistent “Krusadang Bayan Laban Sa Jueteng”.

"But as expected, the national leadership while professing moral ascendancy and best leadership, either allows or even endorses the prolification of legal and illegal gambling in the country," Cruz said.

It is not a secret that PAGCOR continues to establish more casinos in the country notwithstanding the open protests of the communities concerned, he noted.

He added that it is well known how PCSO insists in putting up STL (small town lottery) in as many provinces as possible, in spite of the resistance of popular objection thereto.

"And Jueteng is back with a vengeance even if tri-media continue to repeatedly report its shameless resurgence specially in Luzon," Cruz said.

But the Krusada, according to Cruz, will be unrelenting in its campaign, saying that "The above manifest pro-gambling national policy notwithstanding, the “Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Sugal” is resolved to counter such an unethical posture of the present administration".–

DAGUPAN CITY—A women’s group called Women in Development (WID) Foundation said it cannot agree to a “BAND-AID MAID” strategy that the “SUPERMAID” idea of President Gloria Arroyo is trying to peddle.

In a statement sent via e-mail to this reporter, it said that it should incorporate government effort to first address basic conditions for making foreign domestic work truly decent work.

The group enumerated the following basic conditions:
1. That foreign domestic workers enjoy adequate laws in countries of destination that can be enforced to protect them;
2. That appropriate conditions for work and safety are existent;
3. That salaries are pegged at international standards for the same work;
5. That foreign posts have adequate mechanism to monitor their conditions at worksite on a quarterly basis;
4. That bilateral agreements are forged to ensure their safety in times of war and calamity;
6. That government has the social infrastructure to deal with the personal and social cost resulting from the diaspora of women.[2]
The group said that it believes that that they should be equipped with the necessary skills to handle household gadgets and basic language in their destination countries, “this is not a remedy to ensure their safety, provide them with dignity and protect them from the abuse of foreign employers and recruitment agencies”.

It cited in the statement that 74 per cent of the total deployment for 2004 are women, 72 per cent for 2005.

It added that in 2005, their major destinations in Asia are Hong Kong where 99.9 per cent are working as domestic workers, in Japan where 99 per cent of them work as overseas performing artists (OPAS) and in Taiwan where 53 per cent of them work as caregivers and caretakers.

For the same period (2005), the major destinations in the Middle East include Kuwait, where 89 per cent of them work as domestic workers; Saudi Arabia, where they work as domestic helpers 26 per cent and nurses 18 per cent; United Arab Emirates, where they work as domestic workers 32 per cent and 35 per cent are working in other service sectors (such as waiters, launderers cleaners, etc.) making the service workers the largest presence in that country; and in war-torn Lebanon where 100 per cent are domestic workers.

WID foundation added that in Lebanon, domestic helpers are called "filipinas" even by the Filipino priest who provided them shelter during the outbreak of the Israeli-Lebanese war and in Syria, a government official commented on TV that most of the employers "took their filipinas with them."

President Arroyo said in roundtable she hosted Thursday in Malacañang about the “supermaid” concept wherein domestic help who fled Lebanon will be retrained by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority .

Women in Development (WID) Foundation, Inc. is a private development organization working towards the economic and political empowerment of women with its at the 2nd Floor, OFE Telemoney Center, RCBC Savings Bank Building, 527 EDSA, Pasay City, telephone number 8893992 or email ofw_remit@yahoo.com .

ALAMINOS CITY—Tourism in this world-famous Hundred Islands takes a new boost, twist and excitement once the planned amphibious planes take off next month to tour around tourists here.

Mayor Hernani Braganza said AirFlite Airways, a Filipino-owned company, has coordinated with him for the initial deployment of two amphibious aircrafts which are both 12- seater.

Rates are however still to be finalized soon.

Braganza said AeroFlite will conduct test flights as early as September and hopefully they will be full operational within that month as well.

“This will bring the Hundred Islands closer to destinations from all around regions 1, 3 and CAR (Cordillera Administrative Region),” he said.

He said they are also designing a concept similar to air safari. “You take the plane, you land here, visit the islands, even the remotest islands in the Philippines can be reached by this type of plane,” Braganza said.

The plane can land either by coastal or by land, he added.

“This will be a big boost to the province of Pangasinan in terms of bringing in people and investments,” he added.

“I’m very sure this will be a very unique experience,” Braganza said.

Through an agency and with coordination with the local government,, the US-made still engine turbo prop, can be chartered to bring passengers from Alaminos City to other destinations in Luzon and Visayas, said Capt. Jerome John Valera, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the company.

This means, passengers will enjoy the comfort and convenience of touring around the Hundred Islands by plane and also go to Subic or Clark or Laoag or even Boracay and Baguio City, Valera said.

Valera said,” We feel that it’s what the Philippines needs to link all the islands and the resorts”.

AeroFlite started in 1998 as a flight school based in Manila and only recently did it come up with this project to start a chartered service using this aircraft because as Valera said they came up with a list of tourist destinations and decided to start the service here because it is very close to Manila.

He said they also have plans of servicing Boracay but they still have to make arrangements with the local government unit there.

He admitted that their target market is the people from upper class who will now be enjoying “the comfort of going to destinations from shore to shore without transfers anymore”. –

DAGUPAN CITY— A health official inPangasinan advised people to avoid getting frogs for food as these are helpful in the fight against the spread of the dreaded dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Dr. George Calugay, team leader of the Department of Health’s monitoring team in Pangasinan on dengue cases, told local newsmen in a forum the other day here that frogs are natural enemies of mosquitoes and if people get, cook and eat
them, “you are destroying the ecological balance”.

Some Filipinos love eating frogs cooked as either adobo, tinola or deep- fried.

He added that spiders and house lizards are predators of mosquitoes.

Even with already three deaths and 208 cases of dengue fever from January to July across the province, health officials assured that this is still way below the registered number of cases last year.

Dr. Anna de Guzman, assistant provincial health officer, said that dengue cases across the province registered its highest in 2001 with 1,222 confirmed cases with five deaths and in 2005 with 1,051 with eight deaths.

This year, the three casualties were from Alaminos City, Sison and Basista towns.

Dr. Jesus Canto, hospital director of the government-owned Region 1 Medical Center in this city, corroborated de Guzman’s report that indeed admission of patients suspected to have been afflicted of dengue hemorrhagic fever is not alarming compared with last year’s record.

“The basis for an alarm is admission of patients in our hospital because it is where most patients in the province are confined,” Canto said. He said from January to June, there were only 43 admissions and with the heavy rains last month, they have observed only one or two admissions daily due to dengue.

“You don’t only consider the number of patients admitted for a particular disease but also the magnitude in a particular area,” Canto said in declaring an outbreak.

He advised people ”not to be paranoid” when they have fever and conclude hastily it’s dengue but cautioned them to observe proper medication, too. He said people should maintain cleanliness in their surroundings.

De Guzman said there is no basis for the declaration of an outbreak with the present data of patients suspected or confirmed to have been afflicted with dengue.

She added that in 2002, there were 65 cases, in 2003 there were 288 and in 2004 there were 660.

Citing Dr. Ricardo’s Index for the basis of outbreak and epidemic
declaration, she said that one should take the five years average of diseases, take the second to the highest and second to the lowest the add the numbers and divide them by two.

Calugay added that Aedes aegypti, the type of mosquito in the country with white silver spots on its belly that causes dengue when it bites a person, are intelligent mosquitoes because they bite the person’s unexposed body parts. He added that unlike the other types of mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti bite without making a humming sound.

DAGUPAN CITY—The Sunday Punch marked a milestone in
Pangasinan community journalism as it quietly celebrated Saturday its 50th anniversary sans fanfare.

Founded in 1956 by the late Ermin Garcia Sr,, The Sunday Punch has gone through several ups and downs and continued its niche as Pangasinan’s Leading Newspaper.

Ermin Garcia Jr, the papers’ publisher-editor and son of the late Ermin, recalled in his column Punchline that “many thought (and believed) the irreverent PUNCH finally wrote 30” with the gun slaying of his father in his office by Rodolfo Soriano, a Lingayen councilor, in 1966. The elder Garcia was murdered due to a payroll padding expose he wrote in the paper.

“Wallowing deep in debt and left with a completely shocked editorial staff, the PUNCH was literally laid inside the ICU room of community journalism,” Garcia recalled.

But there were believers and friends who refused to give up on the vision and idealism of my father, he said.

Garcia said the Martial era was a very difficult period for The PUNCH. After being ordered closed for publishing a special issue about a suspected but “undeclared martial law”, on the very same day the media establishments were already under heavy guard to prevent them from continuing publication,
he said they thought it was the end for The PUNCH.

But after a clearance from Camp Crame arrived for the paper to continue to publish, he said they were torn between closing the paper and deprive editorial staff a regular source of livelihood or keep it open to keep the information flowing and provide livelihood for the staff.

He chose the latter and suspended writing editorials. He lifted the Socratic motto “No man is to be reverenced more than the Truth” from the paper’s masthead and substituted it with “In Service to the People of Pangasinan”.

Now, the paper’s masthead contains the original motto.

“It was a time when The PUNCH’s brand of journalism was continuously taunted by the military and there was nothing that I could do about it. It was a tortuous existence but in hindsight, I am glad I chose to make the PUNCH live through it because if I didn’t, The PUNCH would not be here, and what it is today, stronger and vibrant”,” Garcia said.

He admitted that the paper lived down its humiliation in those times to be recognized later as one of the most successful community newspapers in Asia in a UNESCO study.

The PUNCH also became the first Filipino community newspaper to publish online in 1997 in partnership with Bitstop Inc.

The prestigious Philippine Press Institute and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation have acknowledged the paper as the most outstanding community newspaper in business and economic reporting, science technology and environmental issues reporting and best in editorial page.

“All these citations became our vindication knowing that two years before my father was killed in his editorial office, The PUNCH was recognized the Most Outstanding Provincial Newspaper in the Philippines,” Garcia said.

Fifty years after it was founded, Garcia gathered his team of editors, reporters, correspondents and columnists in a simple luncheon celebration at Star Plaza Hotel in this city last Saturday.

BINMALEY, Pangasinan—From a dishwasher, to an unsuccessful mayoralty aspirant, to a regional trial court judge, and a retired Sandiganbayan justice, this man has gone far with his recent appointment as commissioner of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

But don’t make mistake. He may just be literally a small man having a 4 feet nine inches height but this 74-year old four retried Sandiganbayan justice stands tall, figuratively that is, among his kabaleyans (townmates) and provincemates for his known integrity, honesty, morality and untarnished reputation, both in his private and public life.

Nicodemo Ferrer, a native of Mabini st. this town, who was appointed by President Gloria Arroyo last month to complete the seven-man Comelec commissioners, however said that “I am not a knight in shining armor riding on a white horse to save the country because I am honest. I do not intend to be like that….”

Ferrer was feted Saturday night via a testimonial dinner by the municipal government here led by Mayor Simplicio Rosario. In fact, Rosario said he joins thousands of his kabaleyans in saluting Ferrer but felt somehow dismayed when a national daily erroneously reported that Ferrer was from San Carlos City this province.

The mayor and the municipal council members presented a resolution sponsored by Councilor Leo Urmaza embodied on a glass plaque congratulating Ferrer for “ bringing honor and glory to his hometown with his recent appointment and for serving as an inspiration to Binmaleynians”.

“President Gloria Arroyo made the right choice because Commissioner Ferrer is the epitome of Mr. Clean, “ Rosario said.
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LINGAYEN, Pangasinan—The first North Luzon Legislative Summit on Children which brings together vice governors, vice mayors, provincial board members, councilors will be held at the Narciso Ramos Sports and Civic Center here today until July 6.

With a theme “Empowering Children, Assuring the Future”, Vice Governor Oscar Lambino of this province said that this is in partnership with the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Department of Interior and Local Government.

Lambino, secretary-general of the Vice Governors’ League of the Philippines (VGLP), said the series of legislative summits on children aim to convince local stakeholders of the important role of children in nation-building and to open their minds to the different opportunities and challenges besetting them.

It is envisioned that the activities will encourage open discussions on the state of children in the different provinces as well as to determine their order of priority in the development plan of local government unit.

Lambino said the discussions/workshops during the summit will facilitate a dynamic and grassroots based assessment on the actual figures/data that will indicate whether children’s causes/concerns had been properly addressed by the community or the local government.

He added that it will also help determine the areas that need to be improved to forge ahead in the child-friendly movement.

During the summit, there will be a proper assessment of the state of children in north Luzon. It is also expected that a timetable for the completion/refinement of the three gifts for children, namely: the Local Code for Children, Investment Code for Children and the Local Development Plan for Children will be made. These will also serve as work plan that an LGU will pursue to become child-friendly.

Guests of honor during the summit will be Dr. Nicholas Alipui, country representative of UNICEF, Social Welfare and Development Secretary Esperanza Cabral, Vice Gov. Julius Caesar Herrera, national president of VGLP and Vice Mayor Jessie Cruz, national president of the Vice Mayors’ League of the
Philippines.

The Luzon summit is the second major island conference after the successful holding of the first Visayas Legislative Summit on Children on Nov. 7-9, 2005 in Tagbilaran, Bohol.

The third major conference will be held in the province of Saranggani on August 9 to 10, 2006.