Davao City to celebrate Universal Children Day on November 20

The city government of Davao is spearheading the celebration of the Universal Children's Day on Nov. 20 in recognition of promoting the best interest of children.

City councilor Angela Librado, action officer of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for children's concern, said the celebration was meaningful because it would be the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

She said more programs had been pushed by the Davao City government and with that, the city was named as most child-friendly city. No other city throughout the nation has been doing it, she said.

Librado said many child related projects had been implemented in the city, although she said more push would needed if only to make a balance between advocacy and issues related to children.

"What is worth knowing is that the level of awareness on the Rights of Children is high among the children themselves and the adults," she said.

She said they were focusing their programs on the rights of children so that advocacies would be sustained.

She admitted, however, that the institutionalization of programs included ordinances and laws for protection of children, but the implementation had remained low.

Meanwhile, Librado said the Children's Month and the City Council for the Welfare of Children, with the active support and participation of the Davao City Sangguniang Kabataan Federation, made possible the three-day Citywide Children's Congress with 100 children representatives elected their representatives to the Executive Committee of the Davao City Council for the Welfare of Children (DCCWC).

She said this was a clear manifestation of the growing children's participation in the city's governance even as she said that the city government had been showing its commitment to the goals of survival, protection, development and participation of the children.
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Davao City beefs up monitoring of tourism related establishments

An all out monitoring and inspections of tourism related establishments is being conducted by a team composed of different departments of the Davao City government to ensure that safety and sanitation is being thoroughly implemented.

City tourism department head Rizal Giovanni Aportadera said they conduct unannounced inspections to check whether these establishments adopt what was stipulated in their business registration.

"We pay particular attention on restrooms and the cleanliness of the area and non compliance means their renewal for tourism accreditation be denied," he said.

He said these establishments need to renew their tourism accreditation and they will not hesitate to cancel or deny renewal if they found them violating the rules.

So far he said for those found with deficiencies readily comply with the recommendations given them by the team.

And with the coming Kadayawan Festival he said they warned the establishments that actions against violators will be toughed once tourists and other visitors would complain about the condition of their establishments including poor service.

He said they had been projecting the city as tourist destination and this should be maintained by everybody more especially with the tourism related establishments.

Earlier he said that since last year to this date Davao City ranks third tourist destinations in the country following Cebu and Boracay. Arrivals remain positive and hotels and restaurants continue to be fully booked.

Davao ICT master plan for discussion at Summit

The results of the ongoing consultations of key players in the ICT sector will be inputed to a master plan that will set a clear direction with regards business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses in Davao City.

Andrei Fournier, member of the board of advisers of ICT Davao said there has to be clear direction both for the local government unit and the business sector addressing some concens that need to be acted immeditely. And this has to form part of the master plan that will be discussed thoroughly during the Davao ICT Summit on August 6 to 7, 2009.

Among the immediate concern he said is on broadband connection where it is more expensive say for a T1 of 1.5 mbps that would cost about P50,000 to P100,000 monthly which is more than Manila corporate, the cost includes the bringing of the bandwidth from Manila to Davao. The service also has to be improved, he said.

"Putting up the structure here with Davao City considered as the IT hub in the island would save on cost. We need to bring in the Telcos and for them to come up with a disaster recovery plan citing what happened when the line was cut in Bukidnon a month ago causing tremendous damage to the industry," he said.

He said they want broadband networks build newer infrastructures and to also bring down the cost here.

Davao City ranking 4th among the cities in the country as IT destination is an opportunity that should be considered seriously by addressing some problems he said because once not acted might put us down as preferred area.

Power outages that are occasionally experienced here Fourneir noted is an area that has to be studied as this would also affect connectivity.

Davao City right now has five big call centers namely Concentrix, Sutherland, Cybercity, Western Wats and Call Box plus other medium size bringing to 13 the more active ones, he said.

These five big call centers he said are biggest employers of call center agents but these companies also face the problem of lack of middle managers saying that this is also the concern of other prospective investors. Training workers for middle manager positions is one concern that the ICT sector here need to address, he said.

He said for a big size BPO it would need about 20 to 30 middle managers and this estimates include supervisors and team leaders.

Space is also another area to look at as landowners still have to understand the business. This is an area that the city could attract locators because BPOs are looking at better price for space rentals.

He said in Manila cost of rental is about P400 to P600 per sq. m. but here some is offering at P350 to P500 per sq. m., he said.

He said the demand is big and looking at last year's revenues, 2008 registered an earning of 4.8 billion US dollars in the Philippines employing some 650,000 workers. Davao IT call centers agents and support personnel accounted to 60,000 which he said they aim to bring the figure up to 100,000 in 2010. (Digna D. Banzon)

Davao prepares for Earth Hour

Stakeholders of Davao City bond together and discussed the campaign as it will join in the global event of Earth Hour on March 28, 2009 between 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm.

During the media launch of Earth Hour on Thursday, March 12 at Marco Polo Davao, Margie Moran-Floirendo, chairperson of Southern Philippines Foundation for Arts, Culture and Ecology and president emeritus of Save Davao Gulf Foundation said the event is just symbolic encouraging the people to join the campaign of saving the environment.

She said the activity is beyond Earth Hour even as she said that change of lifestyle start with everyones home.

Davao City Councilor Leo Avila III, council chair of the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources said that they already passed a resolution where the Davao City government supports the conduct of the Earth Hour here.

Avila likewise said that several ordinancdes and resolutions are crafted to strengthen the campaign on environmental protection.

The campaign for more participants to this year's Earth Hour is massive as Jose Ma. Lorenzo Tan said that they aim to reach 10 million supporters this year as against the 2008 Earth Hour that only had one million.

He said they had been going to places around the country to seek the support of both government and the private sector.

He said in 2008, the Philippines ranked nine among the countries that carried the Earth Hour around the world.

"We want to come big this year and in fact there will be four cities in the country where the Earth Hour will be carried live on television," he said.

He said in Davao City there will be two sites for the holding of the event, one at SM City Davao and the other at the People's Park.

He said if Dabawenyos could mobilize big and interesting event as this could be shown worldwide as part of documentation.

Narzalina Z. Lim, president of Asia Pacific Projects, Inc. encouraged stakeholders to tell the people about Earth Hour.

"Unlike in the global financial crisis, the global warming has not bailout that is why we have to work now to effect mitigation so we can see complete results before the end of the century," she said.

Atty. Armi Jane Borje, liaison officer for Earth Hour Mindanao, Office of Secretary, Department of Energy calls on the people to support Earth Hour by simply Switching Off lights as a way of joining the world in sending global message of hope and action to everyone.

She said this is a step address the signs of climate change even as she urge the public to support SWITCH, a social mobilization movement that seeks to demonstrate how ordinary Filipinos and specific sectors of Philippine society contribute sustantively through fundamental changes in lifestyle, behavior or standard practices needed to address the dire consequences of unstable oil prices and climate change.

She said it is also a call to switch from wasteful to efficient energy practices beginning with lighting in workplaces, buildings, homes and public places.

She also said that individuals are encouraged to switch from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lamp s (CFLs) and other energy-efficient lighting technologies.

In line with the Earth Hour activity, the public is enjoined to sign-up at the Earth Hour official website at www.earthhour.org.