DAVAO CITY, Philippines (PNA) – The City Tourism Office here is eyeing Singapore as a priority foreign market for the city’s tourism industry this year. Jason Magnaye, Davao City Tourism Office and Davao City Investment and Promotion Center chief, said they identified Singapore as priority market because of its existing direct air linkage with this city.

Like the business process outsourcing industry, tourism is still heading to an upward trend in this city, Magnaye said. Singapore is the second Asian country that this city has been eyeing next to China, Magnaye said.

Parking drive

ZAMBOANGA CITY (PNA) – The city government here embarked on a renewed campaign against parking law violators who contributed to the clogging of most two-lane streets in the commercial center of the city. Assistant City Administrator Elmeir Apolinario said almost a hundred violators were apprehended and penalized on the initial phase of the implementation of the drive against parking law violators Monday.

The intensified implementation of Ordinance 248, or the Parking Law, was only one of the campaigns ordered by Mayor Celso Lobregat to be implemented effective on the first working day of the year. Majority of the violators were motorcyclists and were penalized for illegal parking or parking vehicles in no-parking zones.

Food terminal

DUMALINAO, Zamboanga del Sur (PIA) – Farmers and fisherfolk need not worry where to bring their products plus the added assurance of fair market price for their harvest because of the opening of the Rebokon Barangay Food Terminal (BFT) here recently. The BFT is a village-based food depot that offers safe, affordable, and quality food products to better serve the needs of the local residents.

With the assistance of the Department of Agriculture 9 and the Provincial Agriculturist’s Office, the BFT was established in Rebokon, a coastal village of this town, endowed with abundant natural resources, picturesque sceneries, and rich fishing grounds.

Irrigation system

MALAYBALAY CITY, Bukidnon (PIA) – Six main irrigation structures estimated at over P52 million were in total wreck after the Pulangui River burst its banks following heavy rains that submerged 12 villages in Valencia City recently, barely a week after tropical storm “Sendong” hit the area.

Engineer Jimmy Apostol, National Irrigation Administration (NIA) division manager, said the rampaging floodwaters destroyed the grouted riprap at the bridge’s abutment including the huge siphon that draws off water from the river for distribution to vast rice fields in Barangay San Isidro, here.

Waste management

DAVAO CITY (PIA) – The city’s mandatory segregation of solid wastes policy has brought about the decline in garbage collection by 100 tons daily for the last few months last year.

City Environment and Natural Resources Officer Joseph Dominic Felizarta said the “No segregation, No collection” policy gained a recent waste collection of 380 tons per day from the 480 tons collected per day at the start of the policy’s implementation.

Prior to the execution of the mandatory waste segregation which was on July 1, 2011, waste collections reached to 600 to 700 tons per day.