Monthly Archives: September 2010

NOT FOR BIRDS ONLY MANILA, Philippines—After 36 years working as a warehouseman, Billy Vallejera believes sparrows are the most serious threat to the country’s rice granaries, their sharp, sack-ripping beaks more than the equal of tiny rice weevils.

MANILA, Philippines—Lawmakers on Thursday asked President Benigno Aquino III to reconsider the government’s decision to increase the premium of Philippine Health Insurance Inc. (PhilHealth), saying it is anti-poor.

MANILA, Philippines—More than 6,000 Filipino workers in Afghanistan face repatriation by the end of the year after the United States Central Command (Centcom) ordered the termination of all foreign workers whose domestic laws prohibit them from traveling to or working in Afghanistan.

MANILA, Philippines—The Kuwaiti government’s plan to scrap the “kafeel” or sponsorship system of hiring foreign laborers will mean that Filipinos and other foreigners working in the emirate will no longer be treated as indentured servants, according to the Migrante-Middle East.

Last week, NBC launched a new show that tries to find comedy in the all-too-real conditions of outsourcing. While the first episode was witty—making light of age-old cultural clashes and stereotypes, there is nothing funny about the reality of outsourcing and the impact it has both on the American worker and their counterparts around the…

Today: sana may programang gawin ang mga bishops sa lahat ng kanilang parishes: example, sa bawat lampas sa 3 o 4 na anak kada pamilya, bukod sa magandang pangaral, ang simbahan ang (1) magpapakain ng masustansya at masarap sa mga bata (2) magbabayad sa dental, optical at medical expenses ng mga bata at (3) magbibigay…

This question is being asked by concerned observers after the Senate committee on finance found out yet another questionable realignment in P-Noy’s 2011 budget, courtesy of Budget Secretary Butch Abad. This time the reduction involves the budget of the government’s housing agencies under the HUDCC by 50 percent — from P11 billion in 2010 to…

The Department of Education (DepEd) released its initial draft on its plan to add two more years to the current 10-year basic education cycle amid opposition from various stakeholders.

STATE-RUN Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA) has pushed back to next year the completion of the project linking the country’s existing railways due to delays in construction. The LRTA said the EDSA loop or the connection of Light Rail Transit Line 1 (LRT 1) and Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT 3) will be closed…

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) said credit rating agencies and their rating methodologies may have inadvertently contributed to financial instability. In a report, the IMF said credit ratings influenced market prices, and that downgrades through the investment-grade barrier trigger market reactions, which were seen in the wake of the sharp downgrades of structured finance products…

LETTERS FROM THE OUTLANDS Nowadays when “Filipina” is mentioned in the Danish news, it is often in connection with “au pair.” The newspaper Politiken noted last week that 2773 persons received permission to work as au pairs in Denmark in 2009. Of this number, 78 percent came from the Philippines. You see her more and…

According to Forbes maga-zine, the richest Filipinos and their respective networths are: 1. Henry Sy Sr., $5 billion; 2. Lucio Tan, $2.1 billion; 3. John Gocongwei, $1.5 billion; 4. Jaime Zobel de Ayala, $1.2 billion; 5. Andrew Tan, $1.2 billion; 6. Tony Tan Caktiong, $980 million; 7. Enrique Razon, $975 million; 8. Beatrice Campos, $840…

MANILA, Philippines – Two Filipino students received an Honorable Mention in the recently concluded 4th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics in Beijing, China.

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Most parts of Mindanao are still experiencing eight to 12 hours of daily power outages even if the dry spell brought about by the El Niño phenomenon during the first half of the year has already ended.

Changing a curriculum is a very complicated process. It is not just a matter of adding a subject here and removing a subject there. It is not even just a process of revising a particular syllabus or updating it or using a different teaching strategy.

MANILA, Philippines – The House of Representatives is set to conduct an inquiry into the excessive rates of interest, penalties, and charges being slapped by credit card companies on their clients.

MANILA, Philippines – The government has allotted close to P60 billion for the pension of retired military personnel in the past four years after Malacañang deactivated the Retirement and Separation Benefits System (RSBS) in 2006.

MANILA, Philippines – Health Secretary Enrique Ona yesterday said the Department of Health (DOH) would equally promote both the natural and artificial methods of family planning.

MANILA, Philippines – It’s all systems go for the national registration day for Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), Health Secretary Enrique Ona said yesterday.

Bloc raises concerns at WTO review THE PHILIPPINES and its ASEAN peers have taken issue with United States policies that reportedly restrict trade.

GENEVA (ILO News) – A new report by the research arm of the International Labour Organization (ILO) says a long “labour market recession” is worsening the social outlook in many countries.

EACH year nearly 100,000 people worldwide die from work-related asbestos exposure, according to estimates by ILO. There is corroborative evidence that the extensive use of asbestos in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the industrialised countries, lies behind many of the asbestos-related cancer cases and deaths today.

The ILO estimates that unemployment is up by more than 30 million worldwide since 2007. The number of unemployed youth increased by 8.5 million between 2008 and 2009, the largest year-on-year increase in at least ten years. Against this sombre economic background, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) systems worldwide are under pressure to…

No other industry had a stronger effect on the culture of the people as the BPO industry. As reports of the NBC show ‘Outsourced’ hits the headlines, one cannot help but take a pause and look at the call center industry. You have the customer service functioning out of a world that is diametrically different…

What do you do when the person you love who took care of you when you were young and taught you everything you know about raising your own children starts the slide back to infancy?

PHILIPPINE Airlines’ flight attendants withdrew from conciliation talks with the carrier’s management Wednesday, saying they would strike by the end of October.

THE government is open to distributing not only condoms but also birth control pills to poor couples as part of its campaign to promote family planning, Health Secretary Enrique Ona said Wednesday.

MANILA, Philippines – Flight attendants of flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) are receiving 30% less than the minimum wage, computations from an expert from the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB) shows.

KUWAIT: Scrapping the ‘kafeel system’ (sponsorship system) is a welcome move, but addressing the concerns and issues of domestic helpers can go a long way, the Ambassador of the Philippines to Kuwait said. In a cordial meeting held with Abd Al-Rahman Alyan, Kuwait Times Editor-in-Chief, the Philippine Ambassador Shulan Primavera welcomed the news on the…

SINCE the onset of the global economic crisis, between 2007 and 2009, unemployment among young people aged 15 to 24 years has increased by 7.8 million, with 80.7 million young people, the highest number ever, struggling to find work in 2009.