ILOILO CITY (PNA) - Close to 1,000 nurses from Western Visayas benefited from the Nurses Assigned in Rural Areas (NARS) program, an initiative of President Arroyo to generate employment in the health sector. The program is now in its second batch in serving some 96 poorest municipalities in the region since its inception in May.

President Arroyo launched the NARS program to provide a training ground for thousands of nurses who plan to go abroad while at the same time earning an allowance of P8,000 per month for six months. For the second batch, the nurses-volunteers were first deployed to various public schools to assist the Department of Education (DepEd) in its campaign on the prevention of Influenza A(H1N1) and malnutrition.

Their deployment to public schools is in addition to their assignment in rural health units (RHUs) and district hospitals in selected municipalities of Western Visayas to complement the vacuum in health personnel that is being experienced by DepEd.

Cebu retailers push ‘green trade’

CEBU CITY – A retailers group in Cebu is bent on pushing for the use of more reusable shopping bags for the general public in order to spur more awareness on “green retailing.”

The Philippine Retailers Association of Cebu (PRA-Cebu) recently introduced the “Every Bag Counts,” a campaign that involves retailers in a series of activities aimed to heighten consumer responsiveness on the use of environment-friendly shopping bags. “Cebu City generates 400 tons of garbage every day, mostly from shopping plastic bags.

A plastic bag is used for just 20 minutes before being thrown away but takes 1,000 years to decompose,” said Chester Lim, chairman of the Every Bag Counts campaign, during the launching at SM City Cebu last week. With the Christmas season, more plastic bags will be used to wrap purchases, which would result to more garbage, pointed out PRA-Cebu president Melanie Ng.

“Retailers are big contributors to the practice of using plastic shopping bags. But we recognize our important role in environment protection, so we have this campaign. We are confident that we will make a difference,” she said.

Ng said the group has already distributed marketing collaterals – flyers, stickers, bumper stickers, and pins, among others – to members who want to participate in the campaign. (Malou Mozo)

Cebu firm joins real estate

CEBU CITY – Seeing the growing demand for house and lot, the Cebu Belmont Inc. (CBI), the largest non-traditional hardware shop here has recently ventured into real estate business through Colourfield Land Development Inc., believing that their direct contact with the suppliers is among their edge in the market.

It is noted that CBI features an inventory of 40,000 items of over a thousand leading brand names where the span of the products have covered the most basic items for manufacturing to the more advanced or sophisticated tools and machinery needed by small, medium to large scale manufacturers.

Colourfield Land president and chief executive officer (CEO) Chester Lim during the launching of the said company bared that the increasing demand for house and lots in Cebu has really encouraged the CBI to venture into real estate despite the tough competition.

“Aside from the increasing demand of house and lot here, what encourage us most to join in the real estate business is our advantage in terms of having direct contact with the suppliers because through this we can bring down the cost of the construction,” he said. Lim also said their good after-sales service in CBI will also be part of management. (Phoebe Jen Indino)