Agriculture Undersecretary Joel Rudinas is seeking international support for his plan to take out food aid to help farmers reeling from the impact of the current El Niño episode. Rudinas said both the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) and the World Food Program (WFP) are ready to ship in what people need in the rural areas.

"We are determining which areas have deficits in rice production and where there are surpluses. We can supply the National Capital Region (NCR) with imported rice but the situation elsewhere is different. This is a case of food producers having no food to eat and having no money to buy processed food," Rudinas added.

He said he is serious in pursuing a program for rain harvesting, or impounding rainwater systematically, as in Vietnam and in South Africa.

"We have to trap water to prop up our aquifers since continued use of deep wells actually lead to the depletion of water and the deepening of the water table," Rudinas said.

Hydrologists have said that up to 70 percent of the rainwater in the country drains to the sea and only 30 percent seep into aquifers and interstitial water sources.

"The experience of Singapore in treating wastewater and recycling it for other uses must be studied even as water impounding has been done in several tobacco plantations through the help of Mr. Lucio Tan. Water impounding facilities must be built all over the country for agricultural and household use," Rudinas said.

"Even if we tap the aquifers, we must also use filters to clean the water of pollutants," he stressed.

Last Friday, National Water Resources Board (NWRB) executive director Vic Paragas said it is most likely that the scheduled privatization of Angat Dam next month would not push through since no water protocol has been drawn up as yet.

Makati Mayor Jejomar C. Binay leads the opposition to the privatization of Angar Dam and all other facilities crucial to the supply of potable water to the NCR.

National Wage and Productivity Commission (NWPC) executive director Ciriaco Lagunzad revealed that the employment rate has improved, with 38.82 million employed this year compared to January 2009, when only 37.113 million had jobs.

The current unemployment rate is 7.3 percent, down from 7.7 percent in January 2009.