He said opportunity is but a seedling that must be nourished in order to fulfil its promise, and cited some examples: the over half a million TESDA-DOLE scholars whose percentage rate for landing jobs has since soared—from a mere 28.5 percent according to a study done by DBM in 2006-08, that the percentage of those landing jobs is now as high as 70.9 percent in IT-related jobs; and 85% in electronics and semiconductors, as examples. He said the government aims, in the next half of his term, to pursue the following in order to fulfil the promise of true human progress: - Expand the number of housing beneficiaries - Expand the conditional cash transfer in order to include families with children up to 18 years old, in order to encourage them to keep their children in school up to the high school levels. - Fill even more the classroom gaps, and continue to raise more funds for education through good governance reforms, such as the P28 savings (from P58 to 30) per textbook attained under Education Secretary Armin Luistro. - Continue to reduce the need for rice importation, which has steadily declined from 2-million mt in 2010, to 500,000 mt last year; and 350,000 mt in 2013. - Launch a massive intercropping program for the coconut farming sector, which has a big potential to grow if other crops like, for instance, cacao and bananas, are planted in between coconut planting seasons. - Provide more infrastructure like modern ports, roads and cold storage facilities to boost the fisheries sector, considering the fisheries sector are among the poorest. - Further expand the coverage of Philhealth, the State’s health insurance program that has since 2010 expanded from 62- to 81-percent coverage and offered more services; it is now targeting more informal sector and IPs - Continue to invest in state health sector, on top of the P33 billion poured into 4,518 hospitals, rural health units and barangay health stations nationwide - Finish hazard mapping of perilous sites; continue deploying more tools-- automated water measuring stations and rain gauges; also Doppler radars, tsunami detectors and alerting sirens--for better assessment of risks, and training people to handle them, under Project NOAH. - Also for disaster prevention and mitigation, work with LGUs to complete the transfer of informal settlers; and charge building owners who built structures on waterways. - Complete the P6.2-billion flood prevention program for Metro Manila, including completion next year of the Blumentritt interceptor catchment area. - Complete key infrastructure projects like the NLEX-SLEX Connector Road and three integrated public transport terminals.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 13:34:28 +0000
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