MARAWI CITY, Philippines – About 700 students benefited from the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DoLE’s) Special Program for Employment of Students (SPES) during what they hailed as “best summer vacation” in their lives this year.

Sambatara Bandera, DoLE provincial head in Lanao del Sur, said that all 700 beneficiaries were paid of the 40 percent share of the department in their wages on June 19, in time with the recipients’ enrollment period. Myrah M. Alih, regional labor secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), personally distributed the DoLE’s share in simple rites here, Bandera said. (Ali Macabalang)

Transport system

DAVAO CITY (PNA) – The utilization of long-span buses and deployment of water taxis are two new transportation modes that will likely ply in this city and Davao Gulf in order to improve the transport system here. Gil Dureza, regional officer of the Board of Investments (BoI), said these projects were conceptualized in time for the scheduled Aug. 18 to 19 Davao Investment Conference here.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has requested the BoI to come up with opportunities that might be sold to investors. He said long-span bus is the cheapest option using either electric power or compressed natural gas or hybrid with electric power.

Rural midwives

COTABATO CITY – The Department of Health (DoH) has started preparations to hire 100 more midwives for dispersal next year to rural areas of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) to augment the 300 midwives currently serving poorest villages in the region under the agency’s Midwife in Every Community in ARMM (MECA) project.

According to Guiamalia Dimaren, lead coordinator of the MECA project, appropriations have been included in the 2012 budget of the DoH-ARMM to hire the additional midwives. The project, which calls for the assignment of at least one midwife in every clustered village in ARMM, started late last year. (Ali Macabalang)

Tourism project

PATIN-AY, Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur – After many months of waiting, the Tourism Master Plan 2010-2015 of Agusan del Sur was finally completed and ready to take off for global competition in the tourism industry.

The Tourism Master Plan also got the nod of the provinces’ Legislative Body when they unanimously approved Resolution No. 4, Series of 2011, fully supporting the goal of the tourism program.

Agusan del Sur is considered as one of Asia’s biggest marshland and home to the best eco-tourism destination in the Philippines – the Agusan Marsh. (Mike Crismundo)

Fire prevention

COTABATO CITY— Fire incidents in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has the least number across the country, even as the region’s recorded cases in the first semester of this year have decreased by almost half of the figure recorded in similar period last year, the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) reported this week.

Senior Supt. Warlito P. Daus, BFP regional director in the ARMM, attributed the feat to the constant fire prevention campaign that gradually evolved to the regional populace awareness against causes of fire or conflagration. (Ali Macabalang)