DAVAO CITY – Selected teams on food safety and energy would be formed shortly by the regional office of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) to start widening the reach of the technology programs to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to enable food producers to access accreditation from international bodies, the director of the DOST here said.
The teams would be highly mobile to serve the three Davao provinces, Compostela Valley and the cities of Tagum, Panabo and the Island Garden City of Samal of Davao del Norte, Davao City, and Digos City of Davao del Sur, DOST Director Anthony C. Sales told BusinessMirror.
The team on food safety would provide training and consultancy to SMEs, “our main target in almost all our programs and technology promotion”, he said. The region has actually already has one team roving around.
The other team to be immediately formed anytime next month would be on energy, “which would be tasked to conduct energy audit among national government agencies and the private groups”.
“It’s important to study the consumption level of each agency to identify areas of conservation,” he added.
The functional teams would be backed by another program on mobile laboratories that would also be going around the region to assist the many SMEs spread around. “These are vehicles equipped with testing and analyzing functions for food and water.”
“The problem of SMEs is accessing the laboratories and testing centers for their food products, and to access them is to travel to Davao City,” he said.
Like the food safety team, a single mobile laboratory was only recently acquired and has serviced Digos City, and poised to go around the rest of the region.
These two mobile programs intended to seek out the small businesses would also likely get a bigger boost from the expected completion this year of the technology innovation and packaging development center (TIPDC), which would house the labelling and packaging-design unit, the shelf life testing and the technology training facility.
The DOST would both develop in-house designers and hire professional designers to compose the labelling and packaging unit.
In shelf-life testing, Sales said that “this is a crucial requirement of the Food and Drugs Administration, formerly the Bureau of Food and Drugs”. “This facility would test and analyze for length of shelf life of a product, or how long would it stay in the display shelf.”
“We want to establish also a venue where technology training on food-processing would be easily transferred to the food producers,” Sales said.
“Food safety is a crucial issue in Mindanao because the bulk of our production is in agriculture,” he said.
“We would like to see the day that international accreditation bodies would grant the international standard certificates to our SMEs,” he said.
Sales said that many regions in Mindanao already signified request to access the TIPDC mainly for their shelf life testing and label design.
He said that the TIPDC, the “molabs”, or mobile laboratories and the functional teams would be funded under the General Appropriations Act “which did not slash our request of P4 million for the completion of the building”.
The other funding requirement would be taken from the national budget of the national office of the DOST for the acquisition of the design, packaging and shelf life testing equipment.
He said that the formulation of the programs came out in the consultation the DOST conducted with industries and the SMEs the previous months. He said they have consulted the sectors of corticulture, metals and engineering, gift toys and hairdressers, aqua-culture and fisheries.
“We hope that they would view these programs in a positive light. We expect them these industries to experience a break in their production by at least 25 percent,” he said. “We would also expect a multiplier effect and we would expect their suppliers and big industrial partners to experience a similar boost in production.”
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Typhoon-free Mindanao must now prepare – govt execs
Images of helplessness frustrate leaders
DAVAO CITY – Residents of this city and the rest of Mindanao must also prepare for unexpected and bigger disasters and must discard reliance on being free from typhoons, the mayor here said, as traditionally typhoon-free Mindanao watched transfixed in television monitors the widespread flashflood in the National Capital Region.
North Cotabato Vice Governor Emmanuel Piñol agreed with Duterte, as he also called for a “serious review” of the government’s reforestation program.
“It’s very frustrating to see people dragged by floodwater and under the bridge and nobody can help. It’s bothersome to hear people pleading for help and they can not be rescued,” Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said, during his regular Sunday (September 27) television program, Gikan sa Masa Para sa Masa.
He said he would acquire new and more rescue equipment this year, including more rubber boats for the city’s Emergency Response Unit 911, one of only three emergency hotlines in the world equipped with life-saving and disaster response equipment in each response vehicle and ambulance. “There’s always a lesson to learn from all events unfolding before our eyes.”
“We should stop being contented with being typhoon-free; those of you who are always saying that we have projects that have not been bothered with typhoons, should prepare. All of us in Davao City,” he said.
“Historically, we only experience drizzle in the afternoons but we are now experiencing floods in only a matter of two to three days overcast. Recent floods in our areas are not a matter of drainage canals anymore,” Duterte said. “Flood waters has been hitting anywhere in the world.”
He has cancelled all planned celebration next week of the anniversary of the city government program Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa saying “this is a time to be sober”.
The Office of Civil Defense in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao has reported flooding of several barangays in Sultan Kudarat but a personnel answering query from BusinessMirror said there were no details yet. “Our personnel are all there checking on the extent of damage,” he said.
There were no reported casualties though, but he said that the OCD has been concerned about the heavy downpour September 27, after only a lull a day earlier. It has been raining mos of last week.
The OCD in the Soccsksargen area, or Region 12, said that local disaster personnel were also monitoring the flood waters in low-lying barangays in Cotabato City.
Both reports of flood in the two regions were triggered by the side effect of Typhoon Ondoy.
The OCD in the Davao Region has not reported any incident although it has placed the region under close monitoring due to heavy overcast the last few days.
Governor Arturo Uy of the landslide-prone Compostela Valley province has disclosed earlier that leaders of municipal governments and local mining associations have already agreed to immediately implement evacuations in instances of successive heavy downpour in the inhabited slopes.
Vice Governor Piñol said “this is again another time to call for a serious review of the government reforestation projects and environmental protection”.
“I agree [with Duterte] that we should not say that we are typhoon-free because at the rate that we are still cutting our trees and at the rate that we are failing in our reforestation program, we would come to that point,” he said.
“Yes, we have reforestation program, but we only plant and then leave them,” he said. “AT least we have no problem about disasters in our province because we still have a thick forest cover.”
Duterte said that “we have come to a point that the irreparable damage that we have done to the environment would be visiting us every now and then, and even to the next several generations. We have destroyed the environment, and at least experts would say that we need 50 years to repair it.”
“The problem is, we are here to stay, and we cannot repair the damage inflicted. We can not boast anymore that we are shielded from the typhoons. There is an aberration in the world already,” Duterte said.
- 30 -
DAVAO CITY – Residents of this city and the rest of Mindanao must also prepare for unexpected and bigger disasters and must discard reliance on being free from typhoons, the mayor here said, as traditionally typhoon-free Mindanao watched transfixed in television monitors the widespread flashflood in the National Capital Region.
North Cotabato Vice Governor Emmanuel Piñol agreed with Duterte, as he also called for a “serious review” of the government’s reforestation program.
“It’s very frustrating to see people dragged by floodwater and under the bridge and nobody can help. It’s bothersome to hear people pleading for help and they can not be rescued,” Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said, during his regular Sunday (September 27) television program, Gikan sa Masa Para sa Masa.
He said he would acquire new and more rescue equipment this year, including more rubber boats for the city’s Emergency Response Unit 911, one of only three emergency hotlines in the world equipped with life-saving and disaster response equipment in each response vehicle and ambulance. “There’s always a lesson to learn from all events unfolding before our eyes.”
“We should stop being contented with being typhoon-free; those of you who are always saying that we have projects that have not been bothered with typhoons, should prepare. All of us in Davao City,” he said.
“Historically, we only experience drizzle in the afternoons but we are now experiencing floods in only a matter of two to three days overcast. Recent floods in our areas are not a matter of drainage canals anymore,” Duterte said. “Flood waters has been hitting anywhere in the world.”
He has cancelled all planned celebration next week of the anniversary of the city government program Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa saying “this is a time to be sober”.
The Office of Civil Defense in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao has reported flooding of several barangays in Sultan Kudarat but a personnel answering query from BusinessMirror said there were no details yet. “Our personnel are all there checking on the extent of damage,” he said.
There were no reported casualties though, but he said that the OCD has been concerned about the heavy downpour September 27, after only a lull a day earlier. It has been raining mos of last week.
The OCD in the Soccsksargen area, or Region 12, said that local disaster personnel were also monitoring the flood waters in low-lying barangays in Cotabato City.
Both reports of flood in the two regions were triggered by the side effect of Typhoon Ondoy.
The OCD in the Davao Region has not reported any incident although it has placed the region under close monitoring due to heavy overcast the last few days.
Governor Arturo Uy of the landslide-prone Compostela Valley province has disclosed earlier that leaders of municipal governments and local mining associations have already agreed to immediately implement evacuations in instances of successive heavy downpour in the inhabited slopes.
Vice Governor Piñol said “this is again another time to call for a serious review of the government reforestation projects and environmental protection”.
“I agree [with Duterte] that we should not say that we are typhoon-free because at the rate that we are still cutting our trees and at the rate that we are failing in our reforestation program, we would come to that point,” he said.
“Yes, we have reforestation program, but we only plant and then leave them,” he said. “AT least we have no problem about disasters in our province because we still have a thick forest cover.”
Duterte said that “we have come to a point that the irreparable damage that we have done to the environment would be visiting us every now and then, and even to the next several generations. We have destroyed the environment, and at least experts would say that we need 50 years to repair it.”
“The problem is, we are here to stay, and we cannot repair the damage inflicted. We can not boast anymore that we are shielded from the typhoons. There is an aberration in the world already,” Duterte said.
- 30 -
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