EDGE By Jade C. Zaldivar V ICE Mayor Rodrigo Duterte reminded the public to cooperate fully when stopped at checkpoints set up by the city’s anti-terrorism unit Task Force Davao (TFD) along with other military units. Duterte in an interview said he apol- ogizes for the inconvenience, but that people should have to comply. “Pasensya na lang kung naabala mo aning mga checkpoint but this is our way of keeping the peace of the city, that once you’re inside the city you may also feel that you are safe,” he said in a meeting with police station commanders and the heads of the TFD, Davao City Police Of- By Greg G. Deligero M ORE than 6,000 members in Davao City of the Government Service Insurance System may start today trooping to the local branch of the GSIS in Matina to apply for educational loan made available by the Aquino government to help system members cope with enrolment ex- penses in college as early as next week. The Dabawenyos are part of the some 1.4 million GSIS members in the P 15.00 • 20 PAGES www.edgedavao.net VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 Sports Page 15 GSIS educ loans for Dabawenyos Indulge Page A3 Science/Environment Page 4 Serving a seamless society FGSIS, 13 FCHECKPOINT, 13 n SSS members’ turn to get loans next week n P4,000 per semester for GSIS members n But reminds military to ‘be courteous.’ Follow Us On DAVAO Checkpoints vs terrorists: Rody PONKAN. A GROUP OF YOUNG GIRLS WALK FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER IN DAVAO CITY CARRYING BOXES TO PEDDLE PONKANS. [KARLOS MANLUPIG] P11.2B educational fund
Transcript
EDGE
By Jade C. Zaldivar
VICE Mayor Rodrigo Duterte reminded the public to cooperate fully when stopped at checkpoints set up by the
city’s anti-terrorism unit Task Force Davao (TFD) along with other military units.
Duterte in an interview said he apol-ogizes for the inconvenience, but that people should have to comply.
“Pasensya na lang kung naabala mo aning mga checkpoint but this is our way of keeping the peace of the city, that once you’re inside the city you may also feel that you are safe,” he said in a meeting with police station commanders and the heads of the TFD, Davao City Police Of-
By Greg G. Deligero
MORE than 6,000 members in Davao City of the Government Service Insurance System
may start today trooping to the local branch of the GSIS in Matina to apply
for educational loan made available by the Aquino government to help system members cope with enrolment ex-penses in college as early as next week.
The Dabawenyos are part of the some 1.4 million GSIS members in the
P 15.00 • 20 PAGESwww.edgedavao.net
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012
SportsPage 15
GSIS educ loansfor Dabawenyos
IndulgePage A3
Science/EnvironmentPage 4
Serving a seamless society
FGSIS, 13
FCHECKPOINT, 13
n SSS members’ turn to get loans next week
n P4,000 per semester for GSIS members
n But reminds military to ‘be courteous.’
Follow Us On
DAVAO
Checkpoints vs terrorists: RodyPONKAN. A GROUP OF YOUNG GIRLS WALK FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER IN DAVAO CITY CARRYING BOXES TO PEDDLE PONKANS. [KARLOS MANLUPIG]
P11.2B educational fund
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012
City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio has ordered the cre-
ation of an inter-agen-cy collaboration (IAC) tasked to form rules on water disposal as a solu-tion to the pollution of the city’s waters.
Composed mainly of the City Health Office and the City Agriculture
Office (CAO), the IAC is primarily tasked to for-mulate the implement-ing rules and regulations of the Ordinance Estab-lishing a Septage and Sewerage Management Program of Davao City passed in 2010, CAO of-ficer in charge Leonardo Avila III said.
“The CHO has started
data gathering. They’re currently listing com-munities along the coast of Davao Gulf while the City Veterinarian Office is gathering data on who have piggeries or are raising hogs along the Talomo and Matina Pangi rivers,” Avila said in an interview.
“As we have said, pol-
lution and the presence of E.coli (Escherichia coli) is not solely caused by indiscriminate throw-ing of waste by commu-nities along the coastline, it is also caused by the absence of septage tanks. Piggeries and factories could be directly dump-ing their waste into the
2 THE BIG NEWS EDGEDAVAO
Dabawenyo cookbook eyedBy Jade C. Zaldivar
NATIONAL Nutri-tion Council (NNC) Davao Region is
currently planning to come out with an all-Davao dishes cookbook.
As an off-shoot of the nationwide Regional Rec-ipe Development Contest (RRDC) in line with the Nutrition Month Celebra-tion, NNC regional coordi-nator Ma. Teresa Ungson said last April 27 that they would be collecting reci-pes on ‘Davao taste.’
“We want Davao to have its own cookbook because there has never been a cookbook which contains dishes that are uniquely Davao. We want this to be the first and, hopefully, masundan ito,” Ungson said in an in-terview at Palos Verdes where the RRDC was held.
Ungson said the cook-book aims to showcase dishes ‘boasting of Davao ingredients.’
“The dishes will range from authentic Davao dishes to local dishes which have fu-sion with foreign cuisine or dishes with a modern twist to them,” she said.
She added that the cookbook will be of high quality material. “Kailan-gan maganda siya. You
can say it’ll be a coffee table book,” the NNC re-gional head said.
“We have high hopes for this project. We know its contents will be some-thing to be proud of. It’s one way for Dabawenyos to appreciate our own culturen specifically in the culinary arts,” she said.
Vegetable over in-stant food Unsgson, along with representatives from national agencies, pro-motes healthy nutrition consumption through the RRDC wherein the winning dishes will be forwarded to the NNC na-tional office.
“The NNC will be compiling fruit and veg-etable recipes and these will be compiled into a book which will be distributed to the ben-eficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilya or the Condition-al Cash Transfer program administered by the De-partment of Social Wel-fare and Development as a way for the NNC to contribute to improve nutrition in the poorest families,” she said.
The recipe book will also be distributed to lo-cal nutrition workers as an information and education material for helping families improve
their meals and food in-take.
Ungson said ‘the re-ality is that, although the country has a high pov-erty rate, a lot of poor families rely on instant food because they find it cheaper.’
“That’s the situation of poor families in urban-ized cities wherein ma-hirap o mahal ang gulay. But if there are means for people to grow their own fruits and vegetables in their own backyard, it’s actually much cheaper,” Ungson said.
“If you grow your own vegetables, much better if you could raise fruits, wala ka nang gas-tos. Your expenses will be greatly cut from the transport o ano pa. If you know recipes for veg-etables, then makatipid ka na, masustansya pa ang inihain mo sa iyong pamilya,” she added.
Ungson wants fami-lies, financially chal-lenged or not, to con-sume at least five types of vegetables and fruits everyday to keep healthy.
“In the long run if you get sick from consuming instant or junk food then mas malaki pa ang gastos mo. Eat vegetables and fruits and stay healthy,” she said.
SERBISYO CARAVAN. Department of Budget and Man-agement Regional Director Achilles Gerald Bravo said on Wednesday that the Serbisyo Caravan program of the
agency was designed to deliver basic government ser-vices to the various communities in Region 11. [KARLOS MANLUPIG]
By Lorie A. Cascaro
THE Brokenshire Col-lege Faculty and Staff Union – Associa-
tion of Democratic Labor Organizations (BCFAU-SO-ADLO) hopes that in their meeting today with the school administration, there will be positive re-sults in their first collec-tive bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiation on ground rules.
A young labor union of faculty and staff of the Bro-kenshire College, Davao City, the BCFAUSO-AD-LO had its first election of officers last October 19, with Rodne Baslot as its first president.
Baslot bared Wednes-day that today’s meeting is not actually their first CBA negotiation.
The first negotiation was held last April 16, but
no agreement was achieved.“Dili daw authorized
ang administration nga moatubang sa amoa. Wala namo nakab-ot ang ground rules. So karong May 3, magpadayon kami pero sa the same nga hisgutanan, katong ground rules,” he said.
The workers were told that it is the board of trust-ees (BOT) and not the ad-ministration, which is the authorized body to attend CBA negotiations.
Noting that based on experience, it is the school administration that negoti-ates with the union, Baslot said the union was not sure as of yesterday who will be the members of the admin-istration’s panel.
“Ang ground rules, mao ni siya ang guidelines sa pagpadagan sa negotia-tion, example sa economic issues, kung moingon kag
economic naa nay his-gutanan sa kwarta, sweldo. Ang non-economic, kanang relationship, kintahay ang union naay kabahin sa pag-decide ug pag organize sa mga committees,” he said.
It took years before the faculty and staff of Broken-shire College decided to organize themselves into a union, as most of them were afraid to be kicked out of their jobs had they at-tempted to organize.
However, it is their economic needs that prompted them to unite and establish their union in order to demand for salary increase.
“Dugay naman gud walay increase ang sweldo, 2006 pa ang last namo nga increase. So kana pa lang mismo nga sumbanan, layo na kaayo. Naga increase pa kanunay ang oil, ang presyo sa mga pagkaon, ug kining
mga naa sa ubos, mga rank and file, nagasakripisyo na mi sa sweldo pero ang uban sa taas naay honorarium,” he said.
More than 10 years in service, Baslot said found-ing the BCFAUSO-ADLO is historic as it had been a long and difficult process.
“Gusto nako i-empha-size sa katong ginaingon sa administrasyon nga ang unyon daw ang makapa-sirado sa usa ka institu-tion, pero walay datus sa gobyerno ana,” he said.
He pointed out that there is a need for con-stant struggle and analysis on the characteristic of the society as the struggle for genuine land reform and national industrialization is not as instant as “instant noodles”, and all workers must continue to learn and expand their organizations to achieve these goals.
Brokenshire faculty union hopes for positive output of first CBAOUT of 8,453 ap-
plicants at the jobs fair on Labor Day
(Monday) at two different venues, 547 were hired on the spot, said Joffrey M. Suyao, regional director of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) 11. The total number hired will be known in a month’s he added.
“What we do is that we require them to submit those names to us so that within the month after the conduct of the jobs fair we can do the verification. We’ll actually call them and ask them to submit a report and if they say that they have actually hired the applicants, then we call those applicants for confirmation if they’re ac-tually hired,” he told Edge Davao last Tuesday.
DOLE 11 did not ex-pect all employers to hire on the spot as different companies have different qualifications for certain positions that they need, Suyao said.
“Kung meron silang hiring requirements, then we respect that. But, of course, we encourage them na sa araw ng pag-gawa ay maraming mang-gagawa ang naemploy,” he added.
The top five domes-tic jobs for the hired on the spot were call center agents, office clerks, sales personnel, receptionists and accounting staff. For overseas, the top five jobs were domestic helpers, welders and carpenters, electricians, office staff and engineers.[LORIA A. CAS-CARO]
Jobs fair hires 547 on the spot
To attract visitors and more revenues, Davao City is looking into sports tour-ism.
“From what we are spending for the summer festival, we will be raking in revenue from sports tourism,” Neilwin Bravo, one of the organizers of Davao Summerfest, said.
Bravo, who is in-charge
of the sports component of the annual summer festival of Davao City said the second staging of the summer summerfest will be a more comprehensive vehicle for sports tourism.
First held in 2011, the Davao Summerfest is a festival with numerous activities which delve on sports, arts and culture.
Davao looks into ‘sports tourism’
FSARA, 13FDAVAO, 13
Sara concerned by water pollution
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 3THE BIG NEWSEDGEDAVAO
HELPING YOU MAKE INFORMED BUSINESS DECISIONS.
HAVEN BODY WORKS SPA & SALON Door 5 Kaykay Baloons Bldg., Laurel North
Cor. Bayabas St. General Santos City Tel # (083) 301- 1991
Tel No. (083)- 553-2211
General Santos
KoronadalYou can now buy your favorite Business Paper from any of these establishments still at Php 15.
Gen. Santos Drive, Koronadal CityTelefax No.: (083) 520-0816Mobile No.: 0922-843-9427
STRAIGHT from the Island Garden City of Samal, Jayson D. Ma-
ligon, 23, joined the queue at the jobs fair immedi-ately after Gaisano Mall of Davao opened at 10 in the morning of May 1.
Hopeful to be hired by one of the five companies he enlisted with, he was 10 persons away from the desk of manpower agen-cies only by 3:30 PM.
He was applying as loans processor at Enter-prise Solutions and Man-power Services when this author approached him.
“Ikadaghan na pud ko nag apply og work, bale naga walk in ko,” he told Edge Davao.
A fresh graduate of an accounting course in a lo-cal college, he was hired by the school right away.
Taking advantage of the holiday break, he tried his luck at the jobs fair, “Try try lang, kumbaga, wala man sab trabaho karon, nagkasabot mi sa akong barkada nga mag
A day at the jobs fair
apply lang mi.”Like many Filipinos,
Maligon also dreamas of working abroad, but still needs at least two years of work experience in the country.
“Wala pa ko kadecide sa abroad kung unsang trabaho. Sa accounting man gud ko, ambot kung
naa pud ba accounting didto. Gusto ko sa Macau,” he said.
Last resortIf working abroad is
some people’s ultimate goal, for Guindolin A. Cas-tro, 19, also an applicant at the jobs fair, it is her last resort.
“Diri lang ko, wala koy
planong mogawas. Sa lo-cal lang. If ever kung lisud na gyud kaayo diri, mo-abroad na ko. Pero simple life lang gud,” she said with a smile.
Also queuing at man-power agencies, her tar-get job among the five she enlisted in was as a call center agent.
JOBS FAIR. Thousands of job applicants streamed at the jobs fair sponsored by the Department of Labor and Em-
ployment hoping to land a job that will provide a source of income for their families. [KARLOS MANLUPIG]
FA DAY, 13
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 3THE BIG NEWSEDGEDAVAO
HELPING YOU MAKE INFORMED BUSINESS DECISIONS.
HAVEN BODY WORKS SPA & SALON Door 5 Kaykay Baloons Bldg., Laurel North
Cor. Bayabas St. General Santos City Tel # (083) 301- 1991
Tel No. (083)- 553-2211
General Santos
KoronadalYou can now buy your favorite Business Paper from any of these establishments still at Php 15.
Gen. Santos Drive, Koronadal CityTelefax No.: (083) 520-0816Mobile No.: 0922-843-9427
STRAIGHT from the Island Garden City of Samal, Jayson D. Ma-
ligon, 23, joined the queue at the jobs fair immedi-ately after Gaisano Mall of Davao opened at 10 in the morning of May 1.
Hopeful to be hired by one of the five companies he enlisted with, he was 10 persons away from the desk of manpower agen-cies only by 3:30 PM.
He was applying as loans processor at Enter-prise Solutions and Man-power Services when this author approached him.
“Ikadaghan na pud ko nag apply og work, bale naga walk in ko,” he told Edge Davao.
A fresh graduate of an accounting course in a lo-cal college, he was hired by the school right away.
Taking advantage of the holiday break, he tried his luck at the jobs fair, “Try try lang, kumbaga, wala man sab trabaho karon, nagkasabot mi sa akong barkada nga mag
A day at the jobs fair
apply lang mi.”Like many Filipinos,
Maligon also dreamas of working abroad, but still needs at least two years of work experience in the country.
“Wala pa ko kadecide sa abroad kung unsang trabaho. Sa accounting man gud ko, ambot kung
naa pud ba accounting didto. Gusto ko sa Macau,” he said.
Last resortIf working abroad is
some people’s ultimate goal, for Guindolin A. Cas-tro, 19, also an applicant at the jobs fair, it is her last resort.
“Diri lang ko, wala koy
planong mogawas. Sa lo-cal lang. If ever kung lisud na gyud kaayo diri, mo-abroad na ko. Pero simple life lang gud,” she said with a smile.
Also queuing at man-power agencies, her tar-get job among the five she enlisted in was as a call center agent.
JOBS FAIR. Thousands of job applicants streamed at the jobs fair sponsored by the Department of Labor and Em-
ployment hoping to land a job that will provide a source of income for their families. [KARLOS MANLUPIG]
FA DAY, 13
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 20124 EDGEDAVAOSCIENCE/ENVIRONMENT
“JUST like the grasses that we normally see outside our
homes, they are flowering plants. But the only differ-ence is that they complete their life history submerged in seawater, forming exten-sive meadows on sandy to muddy sediments in shal-low coastal waters.”
This was how Dr. Miguel D. Fortes describes seagrasses, one of the coun-try’s forgotten – if not – re-sources.
“Seagrasses are the least studied among the habitats in our coastal zones,” he said. “As such, we know less than we need to in order to use them in solving coastal environmental as well as so-cietal problems.”
The Philippines has 18 species along its coasts, making the country with the second highest (after Western Australia›s more than 30 species) in terms of the number of seagrasses in the world. The area covered by seagrasses in the country is 27,282 square kilometers.
“Despite their high bio-
diversity and abundance, seagrass habitats are still poorly understood in our country,” said Fortes, the country’s foremost expert on seagrasses. “Hence, it ap-pears only marginally useful when, in fact, the ecosystem plays significant economic and ecological roles.”
Because of this neglect, the seagrasses – commonly known as isay or lusay – are not given much atten-tion.
Seagrasses are among the most productive of coastal ecosystems, rivalling coral reefs and mangroves in environmental and eco-nomic importance.
“As meadows, seagrass-es are an important link be-tween land and ocean and support a high primary pro-duction,” said Fortes, who is with the University of the Philippines (UP) Marine Science Institute. “Seagrass leaves and stems add con-siderable three-dimension-al structure to the sea bed, providing habitat, feeding and breeding grounds as well as nurseries for a di-
verse array of fauna.” Among the diversified
species found in the sea-grass beds are fishes, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, crabs, scallops, mussels and snails. Shrimps spend the early stages of their lives in seagrass areas.
Large animals like sea cow (dugong) and green sea turtles graze extensively in seagrass beds. Seahorses, a tourist attraction and of medicinal value, reside in seagrass beds.
A total of 1,384 indi-viduals and 55 species from 25 fish families have been identified from five seagrass sites in the country alone.
“All have economic value mostly as food and aquarium specimens,” Fortes reported. “Five times as many fish live in seagrass beds as above sea floors of mud, shells, and sand.”
Seagrass meadows also act as sediment traps and as breakwaters offering natu-ral shoreline protection.
Without the seagrass roots anchoring the bottom sediments, they become loose, erode, and smother populations. Scallops, clams, crabs, and many fish species suffer from the loss of protective seagrass habi-tat and from the sedimenta-tion and erosion of the bot-tom.
Some seagrasses, like seaweeds, can be eaten, too. For instance, the seeds of Enhalus acoroides, one of the more common seagrass species found locally, are eaten raw. The young leaves of the other species may be eaten as salad when mixed with tomato and other veg-etables.
Recently, a Filipino chemist has discovered that the seeds of E. acoroides could be made into flour, a viable substitute for the or-dinary flour for baking.
“But while a great poten-tial for the use of seagrasses
exists, we should be careful in promoting it without first knowing their vulnerability in the face of environmen-tal change and extremely high food and income de-mands,” said Fortes.
Seagrasses are widely distributed nationwide – from Bolinao Bay (Pangas-inan) in the north, Palawan and the Cebu-Bohol-Siqui-jor area to the center, and Zamboanga and Davao in the South.
Based on the degree and nature of alteration and gen-eral community response to habitat conditions, the sea-grasses are classified into pristine, disturbed, altered, and emergent.
Pristine means “with high or low diversity of spe-cies, far removed from hu-man habitations, disturbed only by the normal intensity of natural elements.”
Considered disturbed are “high or low diversity beds occupying bays and coves, adjacent to human habitation.” Altered are “low species diversity areas,
permanently and complete-ly changed or converted to other coastal uses,” while emergent means “commu-nity diversity is low, con-trolled in part by extreme physicochemical condi-tions.”
The majority of seagrass beds have been disturbed and altered. So far, only those in Palawan, or other remote areas as in the Ka-layaan islands (Spratlys), could be considered pris-tine.
“The capacity of sea-grass systems to provide goods and services that satisfy and sustain human needs is highest when sea-grass beds are intact and undisturbed,” commented Ingrid Gevers, a marine biologist who once worked with a European project in Western Samar.
But such is not the case anymore. In some parts of the country, seagrasses are fast disappearing. Marine experts traced the rapid dis-appearance of seagrasses to various destructive dis-
turbances caused by both natural and man-induced influences.
Among the natural threats are cyclones, ty-phoons, tidal waves, and vol-canic activity.
Man-made causes in-clude agricultural cultivation and mining, which led to heavy siltation in estuarine areas, which, in turn, result-ed in lower productivity and even burial of seagrasses, ac-cording to a environmental quality report from the De-partment of Environment and Natural Resources.
Human activities such as industrialization, develop-ment of recreational areas along the coast, dredge and fill operations have also led to the decline of seagrass beds.
Pollution has also taken its toll. Sewage and domes-tic wastes from municipali-ties are carried by rivers and flushed into the coastal ar-eas. Simultaneously, wastes from coastal communities are directly dumped into the sea.
Like most plants, sea-grasses need sunshine to grow. Dirty or muddy wa-ter shades the seagrasses, thus limiting their growth. “Murky waters are bad to sea grasses because these cannot undergo the process of photosynthesis without sunlight,” explained Dr. Laura David, one of the country’s female oceanog-raphers. “When water gets clearer, the grasses may re-cover, but they could also die.”
Fortes, however, be-lieved seagrasses are resil-ient. Compared with two other marine habitats – mangroves and coral reefs – seagrasses can even thrive on harsh conditions that may bring out by sea level rise caused by global warm-ing.
In fact, seagrasses are hardly affected by climate change as they easily de-velop and reproduce un-derwater. Some marine life would still exist – thanks to seagrasses. “Species that thrive in mangroves, they can thrive in seagrasses. Mangroves and corals may be gone, but in seagrasses, they can still live,” Fortes was quoted as saying in a recent forum on biodiversity.
Dr. Fortes is the man behind Seagrasses: A Re-source unknown in the ASEAN Region (1988) and Seagrasses of East Asia: Environmental and Management Perspectives (1995). He is the first Filipi-no to receive the prestigious International Biwako Prize for Ecology.
Seagrasses: Still an unknown resourceBy Jims Vincent T. Capuno
Dr Miguel Fortes
Seagrass
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 THE ECONOMY 5EDGEDAVAO
Stat Watch
MONTHLY AVERAGE EXCHANGE RATE (January 2009 - December 2011)
PRESIDENT Benigno S. Aquino III has ordered the Regional Tripartite
Wage and Productivity Boards (RTWPBs) to step up its con-sultations, dialogues and stud-ies into the possibility of grant-ing the Filipinos’ fervent wish for added remuneration.
The President bared his in-structions to the RTWPB in his speech on the occasion of the 110th Labor Day Celebration on Tuesday in Malacañang.
The President had earlier
expressed apprehension at supporting the proposed P125 across the board wage in-crease, saying it was counter-productive and would raise prices on basic commodities and other services.
“Kaya nga po kailangan ng masusing usapan at pag-aaral sa pagtataas ng sahod, na di-nadaan natin sa mga Regional Tripartite Wage and Produc-tivity Boards. Inaapura ko na nga po ang kanilang mga kon-sultasyon sa mga unyon upang
makapagbigay na tayo ng bagong wage order sa lalong madaling panahon,” the Presi-dent said.
The Chief Executive also said that he wanted further studies into the issue of sub-contracting, which he said was prone to abuse from employ-ers.
He said that House Bill No. 4853, which addresses subcontracting, may do more harm than good as it may cause 10.3-million Filipinos to
lose their jobs should the law be passed.
The President likewise said he has instructed the Tripar-tite Industrial Peace Council to look into this.
“Ang kailangan dito ay ma-susing paghimay sa kabuuang sitwasyon, kaya nga inatasan natin ang Tripartite Indus-trial Peace Council (TIPC) na bumuo ng consensus upang mapalawak ang konsultasyon sa usaping ito,” the President said.
Gov’t to study wage hike proposal
Importers
Exported value in
2007
Exported value in
2008
Exported value in
2009
Exported value in
2010
Exported value in 2011
World 50,465,711 49,077,540 38,435,802 51,497,515 48,042,193
Japan 7,304,148 7,707,063 6,208,401 7,841,291 8,866,494
United States of America 8,601,400 8,216,440 6,797,107 7,569,999 7,106,663
China 5,749,864 5,469,186 2,933,923 5,724,467 6,102,252
Germany 1,291,941 1,148,424 1,007,952 1,182,004 1,504,958 *Millions of US dollars
*Millions of US dollars
By Gico Dayanghirang
ECONOMISTS have ear-lier predicted that China will surpass the USA as
the biggest economy in the planet within a decade. The timeframe has recently been shortened to five years. With respect to the Philippines, China is now the third largest importer of products from the country next only to Japan and the USA.
Moreover, China is also the third largest supplier of products imported by the Philippines.
On both counts, export and imports, China is now the third largest trading partner of the Philippines. A quarrel with China over Scarborough Shoal is therefore not at all good for business.
But the quarrel with China is about a more fundamental issue involving sovereignty. Certainly the Philippines can-not simply surrender a piece of its real estate to preserve economic ties. Besides, this piece of real estate is known to have huge quantities of oil deposits which can more than make up for any lost trade with China.
But a severance of eco-nomic ties with China now is certain to have a significant negative impact. It’s a price that the Philippines may have to pay to preserve its sover-eignty. But the Philippines is not without options. A rebal-ancing of the country’s export mix in favor of Japan, Europe and the USA should mitigate the economic consequences of a quarrel with China. Besides,
these are the country’s tradi-tional export markets anyway.
I leave it to our expert diplomats to determine how the Philippines can best deal with this conflict with China. Taking the conflict to the UN seems to have placed China in awkward position. The USA’s implicit show of support for the Philippines through the recently concluded Balikatan
Economic Analysis
Scarborough Shoal conflictPHL, China and Balikatan
joint military exercise seems to have also moderated Chi-nese arrogance. Anyway, as far as the Philippines is con-cerned, surrender is not an option.
The Philippines may yet benefit from a recent decision by the USA to draw down its forces in Europe and redeploy them in Asia with regional headquarters in Australia.
The reason for this redeploy-ment is twofold. Over the years after WWII, the USA’s regional allies in Europe have since become economic and military powerhouses and are now more capable of defend-ing themselves. Besides, the collapse of the former USSR has removed the one single serious threat to European security and stability.
China on the other hand is beginning to assert itself in Asia. The USA clearly needs to increase its presence in Asia to confront China. By virtue of geography, the Philippines is an ideal outpost for Ameri-can presence. The country is an archipelago detached from mainland Asia and is dif-ficult to invade without naval might. China is just starting to build a credible navy. It may be a long way off before this navy can present itself as a credible challenge to the USA Pacific Fleet. The Philippines is also near enough to main-land Asia and to China to be an ideal listening post and a base for force projection.
Nonetheless, our present and future relationship with the USA should be based on mutual interests and respect. The Philippines has been treated badly by the USA with one-sided economic and de-fense agreements in the past. But with a common potential problem like China’s aggres-sion, a mutually beneficial arrangement may easily be reached with the USA. [ENRI-CO ‘GICO’ G. DAYANGHIRANG, an economist, once served as member of the House of Repre-sentatives representing Davao Oriental.-Editor]
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 20126 THE ECONOMY EDGEDAVAO
COOPERATIVES are helping the govern-ment meet the Mil-
lennium Development Goals (MDG) by way of alleviating poverty, send-ing children to school and empowering women.
Benjamin Togonon Sr, networking officer of MASS SPEC (Mindanao Alliance for Self-Help So-cieties-Southern Philip-pines Educational Coop-erative Center) explained that the capitalization that cooperatives enables its members put up their businesses, which in ef-fect generates employ-ment.
“The P20 billion worth of combined as-sets of the 97 MASS-SPEC member cooperatives have been able to gen-erate employment and financial assistance to small farmers, fisher-folks and even vendors,” he said during the Kapi-han sa Dabaw held at SM City Davao.
Guesting in the same forum, Mass-SPEC vice chairperson and chaiper-son of Tagum Coopera-tive Norma Pereyras said Tagum Cooperative rolled out as of March this year P1.17 billion loans to its 71,800 members, among whom are tricycle driv-ers, teachers, ordinary workers, vendors, farm-ers, and micro-small en-trepreneurs.
Citing a particular
case, Tagum Cooperative general manager Juriz Perez said Tagum Coop-erative is helping tricycle drivers save as well as get financial assistance through its Pabilisang Savings para sa Drivers Advocacy (PASADA).
Tagum Cooperative puts up a kiosk just like a drive-through facility at its main branch in Tagum City through which tri-cycle drivers can easily deposit as low as P20 to P100 savings a day.
“Bahala na ginagmay basta kanunay. (No mat-ter how small but al-ways). That way they can save and later, avail loan products of T agum Co-operative,” she said.
Tagum Cooperative
has also put up a branch at Tagum City Public Market to cater to ven-dors and micro entrepre-neurs.
In a separate media forum, Tagum Public Market Branch manager Ria Diosa Callao said micro entrepreneurs at Tagum Public market especially the vendors were glad that Tagum Co-operative put up a branch near them.
Tagum Cooperative encourages savings par-allel with loans. It re-quires P500 initial share capital (of the P8,000 minimum share capital) as part of the total P1,800 membership fee.
In extending financial assistance, Tagum Coop-
erative allows members to loan 90 percent of their share capital as one of its loan products.
To encourage pupils and high school stu-dents to save for their future, Tagum Coopera-tive has opened their Af-latoun Program in Tagum City public elementary schools, through which pupils can deposit sav-ings of as low as P5.
Aside from educat-ing children about their rights and responsibili-ties, Aflatoun teaches them to manager their fi-nancial resources. Aside from the Philippines, 82 more countries are implementing Aflatoun, reaching out to more than 1 million children.
Co-ops play crucial role in meeting MDG
THE Asia-Pacific Economic Coopera-tion (APEC) forum
“is taking concrete steps toward the realization of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) by making an important and meaningful contribution as an incubator for lead-ership and ideas,” Am-bassador Muhamad Noor, Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat based in Singapore, said.
Noor delivered the remarks to members of the business community, public sector and aca-demia in Singapore at a conference organized by the Pacific Economic Co-operation Council (PECC). Participants gathered to discuss ways to address emerging challenges in the region.
He remarked that the
APEC region is expected to outperform global growth over the next two years.
“According to the re-cent IMF World Econom-ic Outlook released last week, the global economy is forecast to grow by 3.5 percent in 2012 and 4.1 percent in 2013 while real GDP in the APEC re-gion is projected to grow by 4.3 percent in 2012 and 4.7 percent in 2013 –- higher than the fore-cast for world growth.
“Economic growth in APEC is forecast to grow faster in 2012 compared to the previous year, part-ly reflecting the recovery process from natural di-sasters that struck the re-gion in 2011,” Noor said.
APEC is defining, shaping, and addressing “next generation” trade
and investment issues –- such as SME (small and medium enterprises) par-ticipation, supply chain improvements and inno-vation -– that an FTAAP should contain.
“APEC economies emphasize the strategic importance of regional economic integration and cooperation as a way to achieve sustainable growth and equitable development in the Asia-Pacific,” explained Noor. “These roots lie in APEC’s original agenda to sup-port the multilateral trad-ing system.”
Despite the absence of a formal agreement, APEC economies are more like-ly to export and import with members than non-members, a study con-ducted by the APEC Policy Support Unit found.
“Already, the impact of APEC membership on trade among members is comparable to a free trade agreement, even though APEC members are not bound by formal rules or trade treaties,” Noor said.
In addition to low-ering tariffs, significant progress has been made in reducing non-tariff barriers and increasing trade facilitation in the region.
“Member economies have taken concerted ac-tion and progressed in a wide array of economic, trade, investment and so-cial areas. Despite these achievements, APEC’s continued efforts on re-gional economic integra-tion remain especially important under the cur-rent difficult economic situation,” he concluded.
APEC taking concrete steps for free trade area
BUDGET Secretary Butch Abad on Tuesday said there
will be no across-the-board salary increase as the government is still studying the P125 wage hike demand of labor groups.
Abad made the an-nouncement during the Labor Day celebration at the historic Chino Roces Bridge (formerly Men-diola) before a throng of labor groups.
“Naatasan po kami ng Pangulo na makipa-gusap sa inyo tungkol sa mga interes, problema at rekomendasyon na gus-to ninyong ipahayag sa ating gobyerno. Pagaara-lan ng Pangulo ang mga ito para gawan ng kauku-lang aksyon,” Abad told labor groups.
Labor coalition Nag-kaisa! has submitted a letter to the President asking him to end con-tractualization and to grant a 90-peso wage increase in the National Capital Region and other pending increases in all regions.
Labor Secretary Ro-salinda Baldoz earlier said petitions for salary increase in the NCR will be tackled on May 26 or a year after the last round of increases was imple-mented.
She however asked the NCR Regional Tripar-tite Wage and Productiv-ity Board to fasttrack its public consultation on the wage increase peti-tion so it can “act fast to-wards making a decision” after May 26.
DBM: P125-wage hike too high
AQ Skin Solutions Inc., a United States-based leading
medical grade cosmetics company, expects its Phil-ippine business to boost its overall revenues on the back of strong demand.
“I think we can have great success here just like in other countries. The Philippines will be a great part of our company income and I think it can show good profit,” com-pany founder Dr. Ahmed Al Qahtani said in an in-terview during his recent visit to Manila.
Al Qahtani projected robust demand in the Philippines for the com-pany’s high-quality skin care products. This, as the Philippines now ranks the seventh most populous country in Asia.
He said Filipinos’ high
quality of living and ad-equate infrastructure created for the business are also expected to spur product demand.
“When we saw the market here, I am very impressed that the data we got online did not ob-ject to what’s the reality. The Philippines is really a fastest market in Asia,” he noted.
After the Philippines, Al Qahtani bared that the company will launch their products this year in other Asean countries, particu-larly in Indonesia, Malay-sia and Singapore.
AQ Skin Solutions al-ready has presence in Cali-fornia, Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, India, Saudi Ara-bia, Qatar and Kuwait.
Cosmetic company sees potential in PHL market
THE Philippines re-mains on the United States Watch List of
intellectual property rights (IPR) violators despite the U.S. recognition of the sig-nificant decline in the inci-dence of unauthorized cam-cording of motion pictures in theaters that followed the enactment of the Anti-Cam-cording Act of 2010.
This was contained in the annual “Special 301 Re-port” on the adequacy and effectiveness of U.S. trading partners’ protection and enforcement of intellec-tual property rights (IPR) released Tuesday by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Office.
In its report, the USTR cited the passage of the Anti-Camcording Act of 2010 that led to the closure of the two notorious markets of pirated optical media in the Philip-pines, which it previously identified.
The USTR also cited the two procedural rules pro-mulgated by the Supreme Court in 2011 to help facili-tate IPR cases in the country.
But these are not enough to convince the USTR to del-ist the Philippines from its list of IPR violators.
“The United States is hopeful that effective imple-mentation of these rules will help streamline the judicial process for IPR cases,” the report said.
The report also said that the U.S. encourages the Phil-ippines to strengthen the criminal enforcement of IPR by improving the quality of criminal investigations and prosecutions.
“The Philippines should also clarify its procedures for obtaining provisional measures, including by im-proving predictability with respect to search and sei-zure orders,” the Special 301 Report added.
PHL still a counterfeit hotspot
Tagum Cooperative chair Norma Pereyras (center) and general manager Juris Perez(right). [KARLOS MANLUPIG]
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 7GAME CHANGERSEDGEDAVAO
One wonders: Can someone be a dentist and a celebrity at the same time? Yes, if you happen to be Dr. Rovic Ire Cuasito, the host of Kapamilya Mas Winner Ka, an ABS-CBN Mindanao wide game show every Saturday.
Although he loves work-ing as a dentist, Rovic never dreamed of becoming one. “When I was still in high school, I really wanted to be-come an architect,” he says. But he also wanted to study at Ateneo de Davao Universi-ty (ADDU), where his dream course was not offered. So, he opted to take his second choice – dentistry.
“Actually, it was my mother who influenced me to consider dentistry as another option,” Rovic says. “She has an uncle and a friend who were dentists. Both were successful in their chosen careers.”
It was a decision he nev-er regretted. After attend-ing his pre-dental course at ADDU, he went straight to Davao Medical School Foun-dation (DMSF), where he graduated in 2000 at the age of 23.
“Right after I graduated, I worked as a contractual un-derboard government den-tist at Toril for six months,” he says. “Then, I took a leave for three months to take the board exam. Then I went back for another six months. After my contract expired, I
became an associate dentist at Diaz Children’s Dental Clinic for a year then decid-ed to open my own clinic.”
Despite difficulties, he was able to raise the mon-ey needed to start his own practice. But it took him two years. “My persistence paid off,” he admits. Today, he has two clinics. Cool Smiles Dental Clinic opened in Toril in 2002. Three years later, he inaugurated his second branch at Tionko Arcade in Bajada Street . Both clinics are in Davao City .
The good thing is that his wife fully supports him in all his endeavors. Ethel Viloria-Cuasito understands him well because she is also a dentist. He met her when both were dental students.
“Her being mysterious,” he replies when asked what trait endeared him to her. “Among my dental class-mates, she was the only one who was very silent. She won’t talk to me unlike my other classmates. I guess the challenge of knowing her lead me to a trap of fall-ing in love with her.”
His wife is a faculty member of DMSF and one of the clinical instructors of its College of Dentistry. “We often exchange notes,” Rovic says. “We discuss and study cases together. As such, it is easy for us to solve any den-tal problem that may arise.
“We believe in the saying
that two heads are better than one,” he continues. “We even work and treatment segregation, which I think is advantageous in our prac-tice because we focus on our own field of specialty.”
Indeed, having a dentist as a wife is a big plus fac-tor. “Our patients can have a choice; whether they want a male or female dentist. We are working at the same clinic most of the time and we are always together as a couple.”
Among the two dentists, he is the celebrity. That’s one of the reasons why their patients trust them. “Our patients know we won’t fool them because I’m a televi-sion personality and I won’t put my reputation at risk.”
Rovic was not yet a dentist when he embarked a career on television. He started young, he says. “Ever since I was a little boy, I loved watching TV shows and even dreamed of per-forming on TV,” he points out.
He started his career as a performer – dancing basically – when he was a college student at ADDU. “I was your typical friendly-type guy. I had the oppor-tunity of meeting students from other colleges who also loved dancing. At one time, we decided to form an all male dance group called Rhythmic Illusions.”
That was the beginning. “We dance on almost all of the university events. Then, we started to venture out-side of the university. When ABS CBN was looking for a dance group to be part of Ang TV kids Davao , we audi-tioned and luckily was cho-sen,” Rovic recalls.
It was only a matter of time that the door of TV hosting opened. “During the taping of Ang TV Kids, we often offered to be part of the staff. When the pro-ducer decided to look for new breed of male host to replace the spot that Alex Santos and Boyet Castillo vacated, I was immediately considered.”
That was on December 5, 1996. After several months of hosting, the dentist who was born in Dumaguete be-came a regular host of Saba-do Jam, a variety show. “All these happened while I was still studying dentistry,” he says. Indeed, the eldest son of Fermin and Rosie Cuasito has gone a long, long way. Despite being a celebrity, he still considers dentistry as his main profession. “Nor-mally, I work from Mondays to Saturdays in our clinic in Bajada. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, I work as a school dentist. At our Toril Branch, I work there by appointment and only during Saturday morning,” he says, “I make sure that my secretary gives my pa-tients the proper schedule. One advantage of working in your own clinic is you can
Bringing out the smile in people
Text and Photos by Jims Vincent T. Capuno
plan your time.”This brings us to the sub-
ject of time management. He explains, “I really watch my schedule. I have to know ahead of time my hosting invitations, TV tapings, clinic visitations and my time with my family. You compromise: know when to say yes or no and whether I’m available or not. It’s here where the advantage of having a den-tist wife because she can cover some of my dental schedules if needed. TV taping schedules are nor-mally set months before. In case if my schedules re-ally get tangled, my patients readily understand the situ-ation because in the first place they know they have celebrity dentist.”
Speaking like a true dentist, Rovic claims that many Filipinos have den-tal problems because they lack knowledge on dental health. “If only they can understand the impor-tance of prevention,” he la-ments.
He simplifies on how a
person can prevent tooth cavity. “For our tooth to be invaded by caries, we need contributing factors like saliva and food. When these two mix, caries hap-pen and before long a cav-ity is created which would lead to tooth decay – if left untreated.”
In the meantime, Dr. Rovic Ire Cuasito loves ev-ery moment of his career right now. “I love being a dentist as much as I love being a performer and a TV personality.”
His final word: Smile. “Smile is a positive expression of yourself,” he explains. “As a dentist, I am blessed with a skill that can make people smile bet-ter. As a performer and TV personality, I am blessed with a talent to inspire and make people smile. But to smile is actually dependent on one’s self. My life’s ex-periences were not always easy, but in times of diffi-culties I always chose to be positive. I usually look at it with a smile.”
TO his patients, he is one of the best dentists in the city. To his fans, he is an extraordinary entertainer.
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 20128 VANTAGE POINTS
Important documentEDITORIAL
EDGEDAVAOProviding solutions to a seamless global village.
ANTONIO M. AJEROEditor in Chief
OLIVIA D. VELASCOGeneral Manager
LORIE ANN A. CASCARO • JADE C. ZALDIVAR • MOSES C. BILLACURAStaff Writers
Columnists: MA. TERESA L. UNGSON • EDCER C. ESCUDERO • AURELIO A. PEÑA • ZHAUN ORTEGA • BERNADETTE “ADDIE” B. BORBON • MARY ANN “ADI” C. QUISIDO • LEANDRO B. DAVAL SR., • NIKKI GOTIANSE-TAN • NICASIO ANGELO AGUSTIN • EMILY ZEN CHUA • CARLOS MUNDA Economic Analyst: ENRICO “GICO” G. DAYANGIRANG
KARLOS C. MANLUPIG • JOSEPH LAWRENCE P. GARCIALEANDRO S. DAVAL JR.,
PhotographyARLENE D. PASAJE
Cartoons
KENNETH IRVING K. ONGCreative Solutions
NEILWIN L. BRAVOSports and Motoring
Printed by Zion Accuprint Publishing Inc. Door 14 ALCREJ Building,
Quirino Avenue, 8000, Davao City, PhilippinesTel: (082) 301-6235
CAGAYAN DE ORO MARKETING OFFICELEIZEL A. DELOSO | Marketing ManagerUnit 6, Southbank Plaza Velez-Yacapin Sts.Cagayan de Oro CityTel: (088) 852-4894
MANILA MARKETING OFFICEANGELICA R. GARCIA | Marketing ManagerBlk. 1, Lot 10, La Mar Townhomes, Apitong St.,Marikina Heights, Marikina City Tel: (02) 942-1503
CARLO P. MALLOFeatures and Lifestyle
ALBERTO DALILANManaging
GREGORIO G. DELIGEROAssociate
RAMON M. MAXEYConsultant
JOCELYN S. PANESDirector of Sales
RICHARD C. EBONAIMELDA P. LEE
Advertising SpecialistsAGUSTIN V. MIAGAN JR
Circulation
SOLANI D. MARATASFinance
EDGEDAVAO
Communicating with PWDs
BY MODESTO ANTONIO G. IBARRA
SPECIAL FEATURE
RESIDENTIAL subdivisions and simi-lar projects are banned in areas classified as high risk under the up-
dated comprehensive development plan of Davao City for 2011-2021.
If finally implemented, the prohibition will be a proactive move that will benefit Dabawenyos and other buyers of home lots in subdivisions that may be situated in sites which are prone to landslides, earth-quakes, floods and similar disasters.
According to Robert Alabado III, head of the City Planning and Development Office, data from the Mines and Geosciences Bu-reau (MGB) were used to classify or reclas-sify the areas.
Alabado said government structures situated in landslide-prone areas will be transferred, especially schools and police stations which, ironically, are usually trans-formed into evacuation centers in times of natural calamities and even man-made di-sasters like fire incidents. In a way, this is an admission that there are indeed govern-ment structures in sites where disasters can happen anytime.
Alabado said residential areas already
classified as danger zones or highly sus-ceptible to flooding and landslide under the new zoning ordinance may be allowed to stay for as long corrective measures are done such as elevating their structures by adding another level or two.
A similar lenient policy will be adopted for commercial establishments, on condi-tion that they will no longer expand, espe-cially those industries engaged in harmful chemicals.
The Calinan riverside and other areas along the Davao River are classified as high risks for flooding.
Informal settlers along the rivers, he said, are not included in the zoning plan, however, the government already has a plan where to relocate them.
That the comprehensive development plan is a very important document is be-yond question. The strongest argument for this is the property boom being expe-rienced by the city right now. There is an absolute need to regulate the development activities. The horrifying alternative is cha-os and anarchy that will make us all suffer as a result.
PROPER communication promotes better relationships among peo-ple.
For persons with disabilities (PWDs), it spurs their social rehabili-tation and development, more so their self-acceptance and that of the people around them. It lessens, if not totally eradicates, attitudinal biases and dis-criminating practices toward them.
Communicating disability matters and descriptions of persons with dis-abilities involves the way we call and refer to them, using appropriate words and the way we use them as subjects or as part of the message in any commu-nication.
The National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) spearheads the cam-paign to let everybody know the proper way to communicate with persons with disability.
NCDA Executive Director Mateo Lee said, “We are seeking some euphemistic approach from the society on the words they use when referring to or talking to us people with disability.”
NCDA said these words, common-ly used, “cut like a knife straight to a PWD’s heart.”
They are generally referred to, in speech and in print, as “disabled” but they prefer to be called “persons with disability.”
Moreover, the terms “differently abled” and ”physically or mentally chal-lenged” should be avoided, and “person with a disability since birth” or just plain “person with disability” should be used.
Lee, himself with vision impaired, said the “deaf” would just like to be referred to as merely persons who are deaf and not speech impaired, while for those blind (only for those who cannot see), they prefer to be called partially sighted, visually impaired, vision im-paired or with low vision.
It is also insulting for a PWD to be called “deaf and dumb or deaf mute;” he or she should rather be called person with hearing impaired or hard hearing.
The NCDA also said that for the “mentally retarded,” they should be re-ferred to as persons with disability or with learning disability; for those called “cripple or crippled,” they should be mentioned as “persons having physical disability.”
The terms “dwarf,” “mongoloid” and “vegetable” are not pleasant to the ear, so they want to hear the words “person of short stature,” “person with down syndrome,” and “person in a coma or comatose,” respectively.
The NCDA also suggests the term “mental illness” instead of saying “luna-tic,” “insane,” “mad” or “crazy” for per-son with such impairment.
Organizations of and for persons with disabilities around the world have recommended the foregoing words to use as basic guidelines whenever com-municators refer to PWDs in the pro-duction of any communication prod-ucts, be it in oral, written or in electron-ic form.
These helpful recommendations give more emphasis on “being a person” of the persons with disabilities rather than on their handicap, thus developing a friendlier society for them. [PNA]
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 9VANTAGE POINTS
Monkey Business
EDGEDAVAO
Floyd eats his words Restless in Panatag 2
Why Pinoys still mistrust the stock market
FL A M -B O YA N T American
boxing star but prison-bound Floyd Mayweather Jr. used to taunt arch rival
M a n n y Pacquiao for feasting on his leftovers.
Pacquiao, after all, fought three box-ers who all suffered defeats from May-weather before bowing to the Filipino boxing icon.
While Pacquiao and Mayweather both emerged victorious against them, the two scored contrasting victories against the same opponents.
Pacquiao’s win over Ricky Hatton, Oscar de la Hoya and Shane Mosley were more emphatic and decisive than Mayweather’s victories over them. Pac-quiao quickly sent Hatton to dreamland in two rounds while it took Mayweather 10 rounds to inflict the first defeat in the Briton’s colorful but already over career. Pacquiao, in addition, sent Hatton to re-tirement after knocking him out.
Pacquiao also made de la Hoya quit, something that cannot be said of Mayweather who eked out a disputed split decision victory against the former Golden Boy of boxing. Not a few, in fact, said de la Hoya deserved the win. Like
Hatton, de la Hoya also quit boxing after his humiliating loss to Pacquiao.
Against Shane Mosley, Pacquiao and Mayweather were forced to go the dis-tance. The difference however is that Mosley, after going down in Round 3, rode on his bicycle throughout the fight leaving the Filipino very frustrated in victory. Mayweather, on the other hand, almost went down in Round 2 against Mosley. While he eventually toyed with Mosley, Mayweather was not able to in-timidate his opponent into retreating.
The tables, however, have now changed.
It is now Mayweather picking up the pieces left behind by Pacquiao by going after Miguel Cotto after the latter had al-ready tasted two devastating stoppage defeats – against Antonio Margarito and Pacquiao.
Although Cotto is much younger than Mayweather, one wonders if those two debacles did not render him a dam-aged good. Cotto is the second Pacquiao victim that is picked up by Mayweather.
The other one was Juan Manuel Marquez, who Mayweather tricked into agreeing to a catch weight limit only for the latter to come in two pounds over the agreed weight. Mayweather indeed taught Marquez a neat boxing lesson but style was the more contributing factor as the smaller Mexican was forced to be
the aggressor rather than the counter-puncher that he really is.
Pacquiao will no longer be picking up fights against somebody who was or is defeated by Mayweather. Mayweather has not fought a new face in the welter-weight division in the last five years. Be-sides, Father Time is not on his side with prison awaiting him after his Cotto fight.
Mayweather may again fight late this year and he may choose from among the following – Antonio Margarito, Tim-othy Bradley, Devon Alexander or Amir Khan – when he gets out of jail.
Of the four, Margarito and Bradley loom as the next Pacquiao leftover for Mayweather.
Pacquiao, on the other hand will always have the luxury of giving May-weather his comeuppance. After all, he fought three of the boxers that should have mattered most in the American’s undefeated record.
Where Pacquiao bravely fought the bigger Cotto, Margarito and Mos-ley, Mayweather avoided them when he should have taken those fights five or seven years ago – the way he is avoiding the Filipino pound for pound king today.
On May 5 (May 6, Sunday in the Philippines), Mayweather will be having for dinner his own words as he goes up against Cotto. [Edwin G. Espejo writes for www.asiancorrespondent.com]
IT’S A PITY that after all these years,
many Pinoys still don’t trust the stock market. This mistrust can be blamed on the many ways local traders, investors and brokers can manipulate the market for their own gain.
Call it whatever you want--- scam, fraud, etc--- it’s still a manipulation of the stock price by calling clients to invest or buy a specific stock to drive its price higher, artificially.
When a company decides to raise capital by selling its stocks in the stock market, it usually gets the help of an in-vestment bank which packages the stock for its initial public offering (IPO) and markets them thru several brokers who, in turn, offer them to their clients.
Not all IPOs are successful enough to generate the capital needed by a company. Those that succeed, can see their stock prices leaping from its offer price of say, P10 a share, to as much as P40 a share in less than a month. Those that don’t succeed, however, can see their stock prices from its offer price of P10, surge for a while to P15 a share, then drop back to its original offer price and sinking even much lower to its book value of P1 a share.
I’ve seen this happen to some mining companies whose prices zoomed during the IPO and then lost steam and fell, like a failure of a rocket launch, from an IPO price of P1 a share, all the way to P9 a share, dropped back to P4 a share and gradually sank to less than P1 a share and drifting for many, many months. This
could happen despite its “good” company fundamentals like high global demand for the mineral, like nickel or copper.
A chummy relationship between brokers and investment bankers and owners of the company doing the IPO, can reach a point where a stock price can be controlled and manipulated by brokers if the owners complain they aren’t gaining enough from their listing in the Philippine Stock Exchange, or worse if they’re losing money from the listing. Owners themselves can buy their own company shares and drive the price up, with brokers urging small investors and traders to join the bandwagon and buy the stock to make a killing.
But brokers who know how the market works are well aware that this price “bubble” can’t go up forever and will collapse anytime. When they see the huge paper profits rolling in for their fa-vorite clients, they’ll know when to “un-load” all their shares of the company to capture those rising profits before they disappear when the stock price collapse.
If you’ve seen the first version of that movie “Wall Street”, the broker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) manipulated the stock price of the fictional firm Blue Star Airlines to force investment banker Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) to “dump” or sell all his shares in the com-pany he tried to control and break up. Sheen did this to drive the price down from $24 to only $18 so that a British in-vestor Sir Laurence Wildman could buy out the airline.
This isn’t new to the stock market, it has been going on in the entire history of the world’s stock markets. It’s happen-
ing all the time in the stock exchanges of New York, London, Paris, Moscow, Singa-pore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc., etc.
If you’re an old veteran of the stock market, it’s fairly easy to detect this just by looking at the tape with live, streaming stock prices or a stock chart. A good trad-er, in fact, can also play this little “game” and actually make a lot of profit from the stock manipulators themselves.
It’s a pity that Pinoys who are igno-rant how the market really works easily develop an unwavering mistrust of the stock market. That’s understandable of course, because the risks are just too great for any new, beginning investor to take with their hard-earned savings or retirement fund.
As a sensible advice, it’s very im-portant for those who plan to build their wealth from the stock market to read a lot of books on stock investing, stock trad-ing, stock charts or blogs that offer useful advice like www.pinoystocktrader2012.wordpress.com just to be aware, at least, that one’s savings and investments can be wiped out in minutes. In the same breath, one can also make a million pesos in about two years from a start-up capi-tal of P200T or less, using a strict trading plan.
Of course, making a million or more in the stock market won’t happen if one has a deep-rooted mistrust of the market or of stocks in general. And this mistrust is the direct result of one’s sheer ignorance of the stock market and how it really works.
Forces of the Phil-ippines has al-ways been on the wish list of every right
thinking gen-eral or defense official. With ten-sions rising between China and the Philippines amid a standoff in the Scar-borough Shoal or Panatag Shoal, the country has renewed the call for US help in upgrading its military and in building a “minimum credible defense.”
An Agence France Presse report on Tuesday said Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario and De-fense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin made the pitch in talks in Washington with their US counterparts Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta.
The appeal followed insinuations made by Philippine officials that the US was obliged to help the country in case a shooting war erupted in the disputed Spratly Islands by virtue of the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT). China has hinted it would not hesitate resort-ing to force to assert her claims to the reportedly oil-rich cluster of isles and shoals in the West Philippine Sea.
The twin appeals were an admis-sion that the Philippines was ill-pre-pared to ward off Chinese military ag-gression.
As the US has shown a wait-and-see attitude on the standoff at Panatag Shoal, the Philippines should take it as a sign that the former is still weighing her options. So far no American official has issued a categorical statement on how the US would react in relation to the territorial dispute. The US seems to be just watching closely how events will unfold.
In fact, in their 2+2 meeting in Washington, Clinton, the US secretary of state, was her old rhetorical self, calling the meeting “a testament to our shared commitment to write a new chapter” in their partnership.
More importantly, according to the same AFP report, she stressed that the US does not take sides on compet-ing sovereignty claims over the shoal, although it has a national interest in maintaining peace and freedom of navi-gation. It was a nuanced statement, one that sought to mollify and warn China at the same time.
On the part of the Philippines, Clin-ton’s statement should be interpreted as a message that the US would not au-tomatically come to our side in case of a shooting war in Panatag. What Clin-ton meant is the US would not care who owns the islands as long as its vessels can pass through the sea lanes unmo-lested and it can explore and exploit the resources there – maybe through ar-rangements with China that will leave out the Philippines.
That would make invoking the MDT wishful thinking. As some ana-lysts have pointed out, the US will al-ways act based on what she thinks is best for its national interest. The usual mistake that Philippine officials make is to equate our own interests with those of the Americans. That has not been the case. That will never be the case in global politics regardless of what coun-try we deal with.
The 2+2 meeting in Washington should serve as a wakeup call that when push comes to shove in Panatag we will have to rely on ourselves. If the Ameri-cans decide to fight on our side – which is doubtful at the moment based on Clinto’s non-committal remarks – it will be for their own sake and not for ours. [H. Marcos C. Mordeno writes mainly on the environment, human rights and politics. He can be reached at [email protected]]
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 201210 SUBURBIA EDGEDAVAO
KITE flying is not alien to the people of this province or
Davao region. This old age Filipino tradition was merely hibernating.
And when the provin-cial government through the provincial tourism of-fice, the office of the con-gressman of the first dis-trict, and the municipal government of Composte-la picked the event as one of the major activities of the Summer Mania sports clinic of First District Rep. Maricar Zamora-Apsay. Town residents, families, and children embraced it wholeheartedly as this advocates family-based and group team activities.
Rep. Apsay described the event, as well as the Compostela-New Bataan biking competition and the six-day Zumba dance exercise introduced by the provincial tourism of-fice, “a much welcome ac-tivity” that would infuse more excitement to her regular annual summer sports program in the first district.
The additional events, lumped as Summer High 2012 by the provincial and municipal tourism of-fices on April 23-28 in the interior highland town, complement the provin-cial summer beach sports festival along the Mabini-Pantukan coastlines in May.
Like the beach sports
festival, Summer High 2012 aims to promote Compostela Valley as a sports and adventure des-tination in Davao region. The beach sports festival won the national champi-on award in the Associa-tion of Tourism Officers of the Philippines-Depart-ment of Tourism 2010 search for tourism best practice in the sports and wellness category.
Jesse Bolo, the mayor of the province’s most bustling town, welcomed the kite flying competi-tion as “an opportunity to revive the core Filipino family value of together-ness”.
“The event reminds me of my childhood and how today’s children are hooked on to computers that they have forgotten the value of physical ac-tivities that build both body and mind,” Mayor Bolo said at the event at the CNHS Oval on the date of the competition. He had brought his grandson to join the kite flying ac-tivity.
Cong. Apsay and May-or Bolo shared the ex-penses in the holding of the new events.
Mr. Eledios Bejasa, Sr. won the biggest flying kite competition and flew away with the P3,000 prize. The P2,000 prize for the smallest flying kite went to Alxis Capitan. Ro-cille JUmalon topped the
more than 40 kites for the best in flat type that carried a prize of P2,000 while the best gurion kite prize of P1,000 went to Jhyanna Dominique Yee. The most colourful kite with a cash prize of P500 went to the entry of Aires Tia.
Re presentatives from the Kite Association of the Philippines headed by its president for Mindanao Binko Reyes conducted the kite clinic where he introduced basic Filipino kite making craft that uses native materials. The association is an affiliate of the ASEAN Kite Council which is planning to hold a first major kite event in Davao City in the future.
In the biking compe-tition on April 28, bikers from Tagum City and Bis-lig City grabbed the major prizes of P5,000 for first, P4,000 for second, and P3,000 for third in the professional category of the team bike racing com-petition from Compostela to Bamboo Resort in An-dap, New Bataan.
The amateur special prize of P1,000 went to homegrown racers JUm-alon brothers. The prize of P3,000 in the fastest racer category went to Jr. LUbanan-Tour D’Jack Team while the most colourful team prize of P3,000 went to Team B Prof. Tour D’Jack Team. (jpa/pgo-tourism/ids)
Comval revives kite flying tradition
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 11COMMUNITY SENSEEDGEDAVAO
LOCATION AREA (sq.m.) PRICE/sq.m. Villa Josefina Resort Village, Dumoy Toril, Davao City
Minimum of 240 sq.m.
P5,985
St. Joseph Homes, Sirawan, Toril,Davao City
Minimum of 150 sq.m.
P3,600
LOCATION Lot Area Flr. Area PRICE Blk. 4, Lot 10
Villa Josefina Resort Village Dumoy, Toril, Davao City
240 sq.m. 177.31 sq.m P4.8 M
Officials of Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), NCCC Cares and Living Stones Orphanage are all smiles following the signing of the memorandum of agreement on NCCC Cares educational grant for the disadvantaged children at the Living Stones Orphanage. [From left, seated] DSWD Administrative Chief Mila T. Segovia, DSWD Assistant Director
Priscilla N. Razon, Lafayette Lim of NCCC Cares, Ptr. Dante Montenegro of Living Stones Orphanage, DSWD Director Ester A. Versoza, [standing] DSWD Technical Assistance Chief Raquel E. Nunez, NCCC Cares’ Aileen Gajo and Christine Joy Zapanta, and DSWD Planning Head Nestor E. Estampa. (DSWD/LESLIE LAO-FRANCISCO/CCD)
NCCC Cares, Living Stones partner
Davao City Councilor April Dayap with Barangay Captain Elenzo Layese of Paciano Bangoy during the DAYAP KO: Kalusugan Okay activity.
The residents of Purok 11, Barangay Tibungco line up to receive reading glasses and generic medicines given by the office of Councilor Dayap during one of the DAYAP Kalusugan Okay activity.
Councilor Dayap was welcomed by a group of children who were very excited to meet her in person when she arrived for the DAYAP KO: Kalusugan Okay held at Barangay Paciano Bangoy
In the Barangay
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 201212 NATION/WORLD EDGEDAVAO
NATION BRIEFS WORLD TODAYHeat stroke
THE Department of Health has warned the public, especial-
ly senior citizens, against possible heat stroke with summer’s searing heat.
Asst. Secretary Eric Tayag, also DOH spokes-person, said the people should drink at least 13 glasses of water to avoid dehydration, even when they are not thirsty.
No increase
BUDGET Secretary Butch Abad on Tuesday said there
will be no across the board salary increase as the government is still studying the P125 wage hike demand of labor groups.
“Naatasan po kami ng Pangulo na makipa-gusap sa inyo tungkol sa mga interes, problema at rekomendasyon na gus-to ninyong ipahayag sa ating gobyerno. Pagaara-lan ng Pangulo ang mga ito para gawan ng kauku-lang aksyon,” Abad told labor groups.
Stronger
DESCRIBING their 60-year-old alli-ance as “stronger
than ever” and “an es-sential element under-girding regional peace, security, and prosper-ity in the Asia-Pacific,” the Philippines and the United States concluded yesterday their first so-called “2+2” Ministerial Meeting since the Manila Declaration was signed in November last year.
At the close of the meeting, Foreign Secre-tary Albert del Rosario and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin on the Philippine team and Secretary of State Hill-ary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on the U.S. team issued a joint statement that “charted the course for-ward” for the alliance.
Declined
GOVERNMENT debt payments declined in the first quarter of the
year from the same period in 2011 mainly because of lower principal expenses, which offset the increase in interest payments, latest data from the Bureau of the Treasury (Btr) showed.
The government ser-viced P261.241 billion in debts from January to March, lower by 21 per-cent from the P332.065 billion in debts serviced in the same period last year.
Friendster
BELIEVE or not, Friendster is still alive but is no
longer the social net-working site that most Filipinos remember.
Once popular, the company has re-engi-neered itself to become a social gaming portal. However, there is an un-derlying business mod-el that the company ex-pects would put it back to prominence.
Explosion
A car bomb explod-ed outside a com-pound housing
Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday hours after U.S. President Barack Obama signed a security pact during a short visit to a city that remains vulnerable to a resilient insurgency.
Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the suicide attack on the eastern outskirts of the capital that killed at least six people, a Gurkha guard and five passers-by, and wounded 17. A young girl was among those killed.
High alert
PAKISTAN was in a state of high alert Wednesday over
fears terrorists could mark the first anniversa-ry of Osama bin Laden’s killing by American Navy SEALs with revenge at-tacks.
The anniversary of the single most humili-ating event in recent Pakistani history caps a devastating year for the country.
Not connected
U.S. Secret Service personnel impli-cated in a prostitu-
tion scandal in Colombia paid 10 of the 12 women they were involved with and none of the women were found to be con-nected to terrorism or drug cartels, the Wash-ington Post reported on Tuesday.
Late on Tuesday, Se-cret Service officials sub-mitted 24 pages of writ-ten answers to congres-sional committees in-vestigating last month’s scandal which occurred ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Cartagena, the newspa-per reported.
Bemoaned
OSAMA bin Laden bemoaned “disas-ter after disaster”
inflicted by the US on-slaught on Al-Qaeda be-fore he was killed and even mulled changing his terror group’s name, a top US official said Mon-day.
On the eve of the an-niversary of bin Laden’s death, President Barack Obama’s top counter-ter-rorism aide John Bren-nan argued that a US drone campaign had left Al-Qaeda seriously weak-ened, and unable to re-place wiped-out leaders.
Affair
MICHAEL Jackson and Whitney Houston had an
“ultra-secret affair”, it has been claimed.
According to Mi-chael’s former body-guard Matt Fiddes, the pair enjoyed a passion-ate romance before she married Bobby Brown in 1992. They kept their relationship secret but Matt insists Michael nev-er came to terms with it ending.
MYANMAR pro-de-mocracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi was sworn in as a member of parliament Wednesday, opening a new chapter in the Nobel laureate’s near quarter-century struggle against oppression.
The 66-year-old stood to read the parliamen-tary oath in unison with 33 other members of her National League for Democracy party who were elected to the lower house in April, an AFP re-porter said.
The signing of the oath marks a dramatic transformation in the fortunes of the 66-year-old who was held under house arrest for much of the past 20 years but is now central to the na-tion’s tentative transition to democracy.
The oath, taken in front of lower house speaker Shwe Mann, states members will “safeguard and abide by
OATH. Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, along with other elected members of parliament, reads her parliamentary oath at the lower house of parliament during a session in Naypyidaw, on May 2. Suu Kyi was
sworn in as a member of parliament, opening a new chapter in the Nobel laureate’s near quarter-century struggle against oppression.
Suu Kyi joins parliament
the Constitution of the Union” and “hold always in esteem (the) non-dis-integration of the Union, non-disintegration of na-tional solidarity and per-petuation of sovereignty.”
Suu Kyi had initially refused to swear the oath, objecting specifical-ly to the “safeguard” ele-ment of the army-created constitution.
But on Monday she
retreated from that posi-tion having failed to se-cure a compromise on the wording from President Thein Sein who heads the nation’s nominally civil-ian government.
ENDING. US President Barack Obama delivers an ad-dress to the American people on US policy and the war in Afghanistan during his visit to Bagram Air Base in Af-
ghanistan. Obama told Americans the goal of defeating the Al-Qaeda network was within reach, more than a decade after the September 11 attacks.
Obama in Afghanistan: ‘Time of war’ is ending
PRESIDENT Barack Obama said on Wednesday a “time of
war” was ending in a mo-ment of US renewal, after slipping into Afghanistan on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death.
In a highly political elec-tion-year address from out-side Kabul, Obama posed as a commander-in-chief who ended two long wars and crushed Al-Qaeda, and tried to conjure up a new dawn for a nation exhausted by conflict and recession.
“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end,” Obama said, recalling a decade-long “dark cloud of war”, as America fell into an Afghan morass after bin Laden
plotted the September 11 attacks in 2001.
“Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghani-stan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon,” said Obama, seeking to use political capital earned by bringing troops home to validate his request for a second White House term.
Obama earlier dropped from the night skies into Kabul in secrecy and signed a deal with President Ha-mid Karzai, cementing 10 years of US aid for Afghani-stan after NATO combat troops leave in 2014.
“Neither Americans nor the Afghan people asked for this war, yet for a de-cade we’ve stood together,” Obama said at the signing
ceremony at Karzai’s pres-idential palace.
“We look forward to a future of peace. We’re agreeing to be long-term partners,” said the presi-dent, who later headed home aboard Air Force One after just six hours on the ground.
About two hours af-ter his departure, Afghan police said a suicide car bomb detonated in an area of Kabul close to several foreign military bases, prompting the US embassy to warn staff to take cover and go into lockdown.
The explosion was a reminder of the extremist threat that stalks Afghani-stan still, with the Taliban
resurgent a decade after they were driven from power for refusing to hand over bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks.
Karzai said the US pact “is not only not threaten-ing any third country, in-cluding the neighbouring countries, but we are hop-ing that this leads to stabil-ity, prosperity and devel-opment in the region”.
Neighbouring Pakistan has a key role to play in Afghanistan’s future, but its relationship with both Kabul and Washington re-mains mired in mistrust a year after bin Laden was found and killed by US commandos on its soil.
The US-Afghan pact, agreed last month, sees the possibility of Ameri-can forces staying behind to train Afghan forces and pursue the remnants of Al-Qaeda for 10 years after 2014.
It does not commit Washington to specific troop or funding levels for Afghanistan, though is meant to signal to US foes that despite ending the longest war in US history, Washington intends to en-sure Afghanistan does not revert to a haven for terror groups like Al-Qaeda.
But after a war that has cost the lives of nearly 3,000 US and allied troops, maimed tens of thousands more, saw thousands of Afghans killed and cost hundreds of billions of dol-lars, Afghanistan’s future is deeply uncertain.
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 13FFROM 1
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EDGEDAVAO
GSIS...
A day...
Checkpoint...
Sara...
Davao...
“Try try na lang. Gus-to unta nako call center agent, pero hinay man tag English,” she said.
It was the third time she had applied for a job. Her last job was in Kidapawan City as an in-ternet café attendant for a year. That was after two years working in a video editing studio some-where on Magallañes, Davao City.
An undergraduate in architectural design technology course at a computer school here, Castro wanted to pursue her schooling by applying for a scholarship, which, according to her, was a program of the city gov-ernment.
While waiting for hee exam results in May, she will enroll in a computer science course if she is ac-cepted.
The second child among eight siblings, Castro is content with the minimum wage for herself, but it will not be enough for a big family, saying: ”Kung naay pami-lya luoy gyud.”
Better payIn Saudi Arabia, the
better salaries range from P11,500 to $2,000, ac-cording to the job open-ings of GBMLT Manpower Services, including skilled workers, nurses, flower
arrangers, gift wrappers, domestic helpers, and beauticians
The company is al-ready five years in Davao City with main office in Manila, and has already sent sone 600 overseas Filipino workers from the city in the last three years.
SPO4 Stanley Fernan-dez, chief clerk of the Po-lice Community Relations Branch, Davao City Police Office, said the Philippine National Police (PNP) has better pay than private companies.
He said for a police of-ficer 1 (PO1), the salary is almost P20,000, including allowances, and is paid from the first day of his or her training.
Noting that there will be a new salary increase in June, he added that training is no longer mili-taristic, but has emphasis on professionalism.
The PNP participated in the jobs fair to inform the public to prepare for the next batch of trainees in either October or No-vember as the first batch will be taking their oath on July 2.
All natural born Filipi-no citizens, both men and women, with good char-acter, and graduates of a baccalaureate degree are qualified to join the PNP, Fernandez said.
fice, and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agen-cy.
“Sunod lang gud kung unsa ang ginapangayo kay total kung wala kay gina-tago dapat wala kay ika-hadlok sa naga-conduct ug check up,” he added.
The vice mayor said he has always reminded the military to ‘be courte-ous.’
“Ingnan lagi nako sila nga pag-smile mo. Be courteous sa mga tao para di sila mahadlok sa inyo-ha,” he said.
Duterte gave the statement following que-ries on the city’s public safety after neighboring provinces have experi-enced rebel attacks.
“There is continued monitoring. Kabalo na na sila (military and police) unsa ilang responsibili-dad,” he said.
The former longtime city mayor also said that ‘one thing the city can be proud of is its peace and order.’
“Peace and order, ac-tually mao na ang atong ikapahambog sa laing sy-udad. Naa gyud tay peace and order,” he said.
“The reason why in-vestment come in and why tourists come back to visit the city again is because bilib sila sa atong peace and order. And we have to main-tain that peace,” Duterte added.
country who may avail themselves of loan assis-tance of P4,000 each, to be financed by a P11.2-billion educational as-sistance fund program (EAFP) set up by the gov-ernment.
The same loan will be made available to the 200,000 Social Security System members start-ing next week.
These members may avail themselves of loans for four-year degree pro-grams and technical or vocational courses.
Deity Manampan, GSIS Davao manager, said yesterday told Edge Davao details about the guidelines are expected to be emailed by the main office today. The guidelines are expected to spell out who among the GSIS members are qualified to make the loan.
LoanGSIS will extend a
P4,000 loan per semes-ter at 6 percent interest payable over five years for all beneficiaries.
Under the SSS educa-tion assistance package, a member could loan up to P120,000 to sup-
port a four-year degree course or P15,000 per semester with 6 percent interest rate payable in five years. Repayment period will start one year after graduation.
For technical or vo-cational course, an SSS member could borrow up to P30,000 or P7,500 per semester with 6 per-cent interest rate and payable in three years.
Only SSS members with a monthly salary of P10,000 or less can avail of the educational assis-tance initiative. Howev-er, all active GSIS mem-bers will be covered by the EAFP, regardless of monthly salary level.
SourceOf the P11.2 billion,
P5 billion will be pro-vided by the DBM, an amount certified by the Bureau of Treasury as part of the excess divi-dend collections remit-ted by government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs).
The GSIS and SSS, on the other hand, will pro-vide P6.2 billion in coun-terpart funding.
Under the EAFP, P4.2 billion will go to
The 2012 Summerfest opened last April 27 at the Peoples Park.
According to Bravo the sporting events will try to meet different aims which include; identifying tal-ented athletes, capability building for coaches and sports officials, propagat-ing sports business and sports investments and promoting Davao as a sports destination.
The events include training camps, sum-mer games and tourna-ments, sports confer-ences (SWEAT or Sports Wellness, Exercise, Ac-climatization and Train-ing) and a sports expo for sports-related business-man and investors.
Bravo said that de-spite the lack of modern sports facilities like stadi-ums and sports complex, there are other sports disciplines which don’t need expensive facilities, among these extreme sports like mountain-bik-ing and wakeboarding are among the games to be held during the festival.
He also said that the modern sports facilities of
neighboring cities such as Panabo and Digos would also benefit the City. Events held in those cities would eventually trickle down to Davao City being the gateway of the region.
Orly Escarilla of the Davao Summerfest said that the summer market-ing campaign of the De-partment of Tourism 11 dubbed One Summer Fun, which covers all sum-mer festivals in the re-gion, could benefit Davao City as nearly all visitors and participants in those activities would pass through Davao City.
He said based on 2010 based City Tourism fig-ures, there were about 60,000 visitors to Davao in May of that year (based on hotel occupancy) and in 2011 of the same month, there were about 64,000 visitors recorded.
Escarilla said that part of the increase would be attributed to those at-tending the summer fest activities. He hopes that the 2012 Summer Fest would bring in more visi-tors to the City. [PIA/RG ALA-MA]
rivers which eventually lead to the gulf kaya nag-iging marumi,” he added.
Being the author of the Septage and Sewer-age Management Or-dinance, Avila admit-ted that ‘there is a lack of rules to be followed when it comes to waste disposal.’
Asked whether the pollution of the city’s coastal waters has been going on for a long time, Avila replied that the ‘sit-uation is a reality to all highly urbanized cities.’
“This is the reason the septage ordinance was created,” Avila said.
“The truth is E. coli is present in the surround-ing waters of highly ur-banized cities. That is a reality for all cities that are urbanized. Now, when the implementing rules and regulations are created these become a law to be followed,” he added.
Relocation of Dum-alag fish cages
The creation of the IAC is an upshoot of the Mayor Duterte-Car-pio’s order in March to halt operations of the
Punta Dumalag fish cages by August this year.
The IAC was also formed to relocate the 43 fish cultivators who have at least 200 fish pens along the coast of Punta Dumalag.
“The inter-agency collaboration team has already convened and we will reconvene again soon. A study will be conducted in May through the DENR-EMB (Department of Envi-ronment and Natural Re s o u rce s - E nv i ro n -mental Management Board) to find an al-ternative address for the fish cages in Punta Dumalag for re-loca-tion, hopefully after August,” Avila said.
“The study will also help in identify where along the city’s coast-line is fit for fish culti-vation. So, in addition to finding a relocation site we could also have other areas protected and recommended as a mariculture area, but for a limited number of fish cages to avoid self-pollution,” he added.
The CAO head said the city had met with fish cultivation inves-tors for the second time during the last week of April.
“They were agree-able to the conditions set by the city. [We ad-mit] that the closure of the fish cages in Punta Dumalag will affect the investors, but we will do our best to find a re-location site for the fish cages,” he said.
Fish cultivation in Dumalag started in 2003 and grew to a P300 mil-lion industry by 2011 with 43 investors’ 200 fish cages occupying two hectares out of the 200-hectare coastal area of Dumalag 1, 2, and 3, in Barangay Matina Aplaya.
Stopping the op-erations will affect more than 30,000 people--in-vestors, caretakers, feed providers, fish buyers, and their families alike.
In the process of de-claring Punta Dumalag as a Mariculture Park, stud-ies from 2010 to 2011 were made by the Bu-reau of Fish and Aquatic Resources and the De-
partment of Science and Technology (DOST) Davao region, through samplings of the water in fish cages and the milk-fish produced thereat.
Results showed that the water in fish cag-es has a “high content of coliform and other pathogens, including Escherichia coli (E. coli) from animal and human waste.”
While most coliform bacteria do not cause ill-ness, however, their pres-ence in a water system poses the danger that disease-causing strains of bacteria, viruses and protozoa are also pres-ent.
E. coli can cause flu-like symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, fever and diarrhea. It can also cause intestinal illness and, in very rare cases, a serious kidney condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome.
High level exposure or contact to E.coli and other fecal coliform bac-teria can also produce skin irritation or rashes; and eye, ear or throat ir-ritation. [JADE C. ZALDIVAR]
AMONG the regions in Mindanao, the Davao Region is
the first to receive their share of patrol boats given by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Re-sources (BFAR) to munic-ipal governments units.
BFAR Regional Direc-tor Fatma Idris gladly notes that Region 11 is one of the five regions nationwide, and the only one in Mindanao given such facility to strengthen community-
based coastal resources management.
Region XI gets six of such patrol boats which cost P1.2 million each. These are given to the municipalities of Tarrag-ona and Lupon in Davao Oriental; Maco and Pan-tukan, Compostela Val-ley; Tagum City, Davao del Norte; and in Digos City, Davao del Sur.
Each patrol boat not only has a boat cradle through which it can be tugged inland and be
Davao first to receive patrol boatskept in a safe-house. It is also equipped with global positioning sys-tem (GPS), telescope, compass , life jackets, enabling Bantay-Dagat volunteers to go after illegal marine resource
poachers. “Talagang mahuhuli
sila ng mga Bantay-Da-ga. (They can surely be caught by the Bantay-Dagat.),” Idris said also hinting the high speed capacity of the units.
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 201214 SPORTS EDGEDAVAO
BAGUIO CITY — Manny Pacquiao sparred six hard
rounds with Ruslan Pro-vodnikov and Ruslan Nugaev on Tuesday as the Filipino pound-for-pound king’s preparations for the June 9 showdown with Timothy Bradley reached another plateau.
Pacquiao and Pro-vodnikov went at it as though they were real-life enemies with punches
thrown with the baddest of intentions.
Provodnikov had the crowd in disbelief when he threw wild rights and lefts that found their tar-get, making their four-round workout a delight to see.
Pacquiao did not disappoint his fans and followers as he dug in solid rights and lefts that caught Provodnikov’s at-tention.
So far, Pacquiao has logged a total of 14 rounds and he is set to spar again on Thursday and on Saturday, just be-fore he leaves for the US to resume his training at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Los Angeles next week.
Trainer Freddie Roach was all smiles but made it clear that they’re “not even close to halfway” in their preparation.
Pacman no letup in sparringMaria Kirilenko of Russia waves to supporters after her victory over Elena Baltacha of England during the Estoril Open tennis tournament match in Oeiras, on the outskirts of Lisbon, on Wednesday. Kirilenko won 7-6, and 6-1.
Singapore’s Alexandra Toh of The Chain Reaction Project team wiggles her way through the rapids at Sibulan River during the 2nd Mt. Apo International Boulder Face Challenge which finished in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur. (BOY LIM)
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012
EDGEDAVAOFOOD
The Philippines, with a total coastline of 36,289 kilome-ters, has marine resources that provide food to millions of Filipinos. One of these is seaweeds, those marine plants that grow abundantly in shallow reef flats and in lagoons with a water depth of less than two meters at high tide.
Globally there are over 9,000 species of seaweed di-vided into three major types: green, brown and red. Red is the most species-rich group (6,000) followed by brown (2,000) and finally green (1,200).
The Philippines is home to various kinds of seaweeds of which 390 species have been identified as having economic value as food, animal feeds, fertilizers, diet supplement, medicines, and raw materials for industrial products.
Seaweed draws an extraor-dinary wealth of mineral ele-ments from the sea that can account for up to 36% of its dry mass, according to Dr. Subhuti Dharmananda, di-
rector of the Institute for Tra-ditional Medicine at Portland, Oregon.
What’s in a seaweed? Nu-trition experts classified sea-weed as one of the richest plant sources of calcium. Its calcium content is typically about 4-7% of dry matter. At 7% calcium, one gram of dried seaweed provides 70 milligrams of calcium, compared to a daily dietary requirement of about 1,000 milligrams. Still, this is higher than a serving of most non-milk based foods.
Protein content in sea-weed varies somewhat. It is low in brown algae at 5-11% of dry matter, but compa-rable in quantitative terms to legumes at 30-40% of dry matter in some species of red algae. Green algae also have significant protein content, that is, up to 20% of dry mat-ter. Spirulina, a micro-alga, is well known for its very high content: 70% of dry matter.
Seaweed contains several vitamins. Red and brown al-gae are rich in carotenes and
are used, in fact, as a source of natural mixed carotenes for dietary supplements. The content ranges from 20-170 parts per million. The vita-min C in red and brown algae is also notable, with contents
ranging from 500-3000 parts per million. Other vitamins are also present, including B12, which is not found in most land plants.
Dr. Dharmananda claims seaweed has very little fat, ranging from 1-5% of dry matter, “although seaweed lipids have a higher propor-tion of essential fatty acids than land plants.” Green al-gae, whose fatty acid make-up is the closest to higher plants, have a much higher oleic and alpha-linoleic acid content.
Seaweed has a high fiber content, making up 32% to 50% of dry matter. The solu-ble fiber fraction accounts for 51-56% of total fibers in green and red algae and for 67-87% in brown algae. Soluble fibers are generally associated with having cholesterol-lowering and hypoglycemic effects.
Wikipedia reports that as food, seaweeds are consumed by coastal people, particularly in east Asia (Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam), and those living in Indone-sia, Belize, Peru, Chile, Scan-dinavia, Ireland, Wales, the Philippines, and Scotland.
In Asia, seaweed is a popular ingredient of some recipes. China’s zicai, Ko-rea’s gim and Japan’s nori are actually sheets of dried Por-phyra species used in soups or to wrap sushi. Chondrus crispus (commonly known as Irish moss or carrageenan moss) is a red alga used in producing various food ad-ditives. Affectionately called dulce in northern Belize, sea-weeds are mixed with milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, and va-nilla to make a common bev-
erage. There are about 60 vari-
eties of seaweeds in the Phil-ippines that are considered edible. These are gulamang dagat, gamet, pocpoclo, cu-lot, lato, guso, barls-barls, bulaklak bato, and balbalol-ang. Some of these varieties can be processed into jams, jellies, candies, pickles, ba-by’s food, and gulaman bars.
In Tiwi, Albay, residents discovered a new pansit or noodles made from sea-weed, which has health ben-efits. Seaweed noodles can be cooked into pansit canton, pansit luglug, or spaghetti.
Unknown to many, sea-weeds possess some medici-nal values. They are used to treat or prevent goiter, glandular troubles, stom-ach disorders, intestinal and bladder difficulties, unusu-ally profuse menstrual flow, high-blood pressure, and high plasma-cholesterol level.
The Gracilaria species are used locally as pain relievers and ointments. It has been asserted that seaweeds may have curative properties for tuberculosis, arthritis, colds and influenza (or flu), worm infestations and even tu-mors. Currently, a number of research studies have been conducted to investigate these claims and other effects of seaweed on human health.
Some studies have found that seaweed can promote weight loss. For this reason, seaweed extract is used in some diet pills.
Commercially, seaweeds are valued for their colloids or gluey substance, particu-larly agar, carrageenan, and
alginate. Both agar and car-rageenan are extracted from red seaweeds, while alginate is extracted from brown sea-weeds.
Agar is used in making jellied desserts, as stabilizer in pie fillings, piping gels, ic-ings, cookies, cream shells, and as thickening and gell-ing agent in poultry, fish and meat canning. In the medi-cal and pharmaceutical in-dustries, agar serves as a lax-ative, suspending agent for barium sulfate in radiology, ingredient for slow-release capsules and in suppositories and surgical lubricants, and as a disintegrating agent in tablets. It is also used as im-pression materials to make accurate casts in prosthetic dentistry, criminology and tool manufacturing.
Carrageenan, on the other hand, is used in mak-ing ointments, as emulsify-ing agent in water-insoluble drugs and herbicides, and as texturing agent in toothpaste and powder. It is also used in salad dressings and sauces, dietetic foods, and as a pre-servative in meat and fish products, dairy items and baked goods.
Alginates enjoy many of the same uses as carrageen-an, but are also used in pro-duction of industrial prod-ucts such as paper coatings, adhesives, dyes, gels, explo-sives and in processes such as paper sizing, textile printing, hydro-mulching and drill-ing. In the biomedicine and pharmaceutical industries, alginates are used in wound dressings, and production of dental moulds and have a host of other applications.
Greens from seaINdulge!
A2 INdulge! VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012EDGEDAVAOUP AND ABOUT
Are you mad about travel? Looking for a refreshing travel jumpstart? The Travel Club’s Mad About Travel is back, with this year’s theme: Fitness and Relaxation. Expect it in four key cities in the country, on March, April, July and October of 2012.
ON May 4, 5 and 6, all roads lead to SM City Davao as summer’s sizzling hot sale event happens at the hippest hub! Avail of up to 70% discount on great se-lections mall-wide and get a chance to win an iPhone 4S from the SM Department Store and an Asus Netbook at the Mallwide raffle! Plus, catch your favorite teen star Neil Co-leta on May 4, sing with the jazzy Zia on May 5 and tag along Karylle’s Roadtrip on May 6 at The Annex Atrium! SM Advantage, Prestige and BDO Rewards card holders may also avail of additional dis-counts when using their cards at SM Depart-ment Store, ACE Hardware, Surplus and Le-vi’s during the much anticipated SMAC Sale 2 Hour Special happening 10AM-12NN on Friday. SM City Davao 3 Day Sale runs May 4-6 with extended mall hours until 12 MN on May 4&5 (Friday-Saturday), and until 10 PM on May 6 (Sunday). For inquiries, call 297-6998 local 126. Like SM City Davao on Facebook or visit www.smcitydavao.blogspot.com for event and promo updates.
If stress is at its height and the mind and body is in ut-ter exhaustion, a relaxing getaway might just be the best cure. To offer a variety of ideas, The Travel Club brings back the Mad About Travel. This year’s event centers on Fitness and Relaxation. It is set in several areas nation-wide: TriNoma on March 16-18, Abreeza Davao on May 18-20, Ayala Center Cebu on July 20-22, and Glorietta on October 12-14. Discover one of Philippines’s most pic-turesque destinations, learn about travel agency benefits, find new air flight offer-ings and get great deals on discounted premium luggage and bags. The event will include exciting games and a raffle of airline flights, hotel accommodations, gift certificates from event partners and special discounts on premium products. Mad About Travel was created by The Travel Club back in July 2008 with the in-tention of providing the most satisfying customer experience not only through its product offerings but also through self-initiated events aimed at ensuring an affordable, convenient and comfort-able travel. The Travel Club is known for its wide selection of premium and inter-national brands of luggage, bags and travel accessories namely Tumi, T-Tech by Tumi, Victorinox, Delsey, Ace, Mendoza, Zero Halliburton and World Traveller, Co-lumbia, The North Face, Sea to Summit, Nalgene, Eagle Creek, etc. It has come a long way from its first store at SM Mega-mall in 1992 to 38 more at present. Geared as one of the biggest travel event of the year, The Travel Club brings its Mad About Travel exhibit to the “City in Bloom” Davao, considered as the southern gateway to Philippine Tourism.
With the strong support of Abreeza Mall, this leg aims to bring all the perks and fun of a one stop travel and shopping fair to Davaoenos. Celebrating its 20th year on Decem-ber 2012, The Travel Club partnered with Allied Bank to release the first-ever The Travel Club Platinum Mastercard. Special privileges include discounts on Primer products; earning of Mabuhay Miles mileage points, Rebates, 0% Installment Payment Option, Balance Transfer, Free
Purchase Protection Insurance and Free Travel Insurance just to name a few. Ap-plication forms for The Travel Club Plati-num Mastercard will be made available at the Mad About Travel events. For more information on The Travel Club, link us up at facebook.com/thet-ravelclubphilippines or follow us on twit-ter @TheTravelClubPh. The Travel Club is the first-ever concept store of retail giant, the Primer Group of Companies.
Win an iPhone 4S and an ASUS Netbook at the SM 3 Day Sale!
IT’S a battle of the Medusa wannabe’s! emma Stone, 23, and Jennifer Lopez, 42, were both spotted in this ser-pent-inspired nude, black and rose color-blocked Lanvin Spring 2012 dress with crystal snake wrap. The Amazing Spider-Man actress was snapped back in January when she attended a W Magazine pre-Golden Globes 2012 party at the Chateau Mar-mont in hollywood. The stretch silk design was paired with wavy locks, black satin pumps and cop-per eye makeup that gave her a shimmering glow that we’re sure even that embellished reptile was en-vious of. Meanwhile, our saucy gal-pal J.Lo attended a press conference at Boule-vard3 Club in La-La Land just yesterday, where she worked the same long-sleeved look but chose to keep her hair up and off of her slithering friend. For accessories, the Ameri-can Idol judge went for Giuseppe Zanotti ankle-
strap pumps and left her makeup to a minimum. The real question is, which one of these sexy
stars should that snake take a fashion bite out of?! We mean a love bite, of course.
A3INdulge! VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012EDGEDAVAOENTERTAINMENTENTERTAINMENT
Bitch, stole my snake
Is Rihanna joining Fast and the Furious 6?
FINGERS crossed it’s true that Rihanna is in negotiations to play a villain in Fast and the Furious 6. Because if she does take the role, it’ll probably mean she’s gonna have some kickass fight scenes with one of the toughest chicks out there... Mixed martial arts champ Gina Carano is close to signing on to join
Vin Diesel, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Paul Walker in the sixth install-ment of the blockbuster action franchise. “It looks really positive and I’m so excited,” Cara-no, 30, confirmed to me me earlier today while promoting the DVD and Blu-ray release of her fea-ture film debut, director Steven Soderbergh’s ac-tion thriller Haywire.
While Carano said she doesn’t know if the Rihan-na “rumor is true,” she’s as hopeful as we are. “I would love to see me and Rihanna go at it,” she said. “That would be hot.” It sure would be. Just as her fight scenes with Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender were in Haywire. Funny enough, Carano says she still hasn’t seen Fassbender’s now leg-endary full frontal work in Shame. “I’ve never been asked about something as much as I have than about Michael’s penis,” she laughed. “I feel bad for him. What an aw-ful thing to have to deal with.” Believe us, Gina, it’s so not awful.
A4 INdulge! VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012EDGEDAVAOFOOD
Adobo:The Philippines ’ national dishText and Photos by Jims Vincent T. Capuno
LIKe its neighboring Asian countries, the Philippines is a region of mouth-watering delights. Consider the follow-ing: lechon (roasted whole pig or chicken), sinigang (chicken, pork or beef soup usually pre-pared with tamarind and other ingredients), dinuguan (pork blood stew) and ado-bo. Among these delectable meals, adobo best fits the title, “The National Dish” along with mango, milkfish (bangus), and carabao as other iconic sym-bols of the country. One Filipino food writer wrote: “Aside from the fact that adobo is well-loved by Filipinos, the dish also makes use of many of our local ingredients giving adobo the distinct Filipino flavor. We can give credit to the pure cane vin-egar for the adobo’s rich sour taste and to the locally-produced soy sauce for its savory and salty feel. Sitaw or kang-kong can also be added for healthier al-ternative. For spicier versions of adobo, adding siling labuyo and recado en-hances the over-all zest of the meal.” Indeed, there’s no other Filipino dish that can compete with adobo in terms of versatility and variety. Mixing vin-egar, soy sauce and spices with either chicken, pork, fish, kangkong, or si-taw would yield to different varieties of the famous Filipino dish. There are many ways to cook ado-bo. To name a few: adobo sa gata, ado-bong matamis, adobong tuyo, adobong masabaw, adobo sulipan, adobo sa pin-ya, and adobo sa kalamansi. Adobo can also fill the pandesal, siopao, and puto, be made into adobo flakes, be poured evenly into pizzas, and be mixed with spaghetti. And if those are not enough, local food companies have recently come up with adobo sauce and ado-bo spread. “There are as many recipes for adobo as there are Philippine islands,” noted New York Times food columnist Sam Sifton. “If you could devote your life to traveling through (the more than 7,000 islands) asking questions about food, you would discover a different recipe for adobo on each one.” In his column, Sifton wrote: “There is great fun to be had in asking Filipinos how to make adobo, particularly when they are in groups. Filipino cooking is an evolutionary masterpiece, a cuisine that includes Chinese, Spanish, Ameri-can and indigenous island influences, all rolled into one. But where for one Filipino the most important aspect of the dish is Spanish, for another it is Chi-nese, or both, or neither.” Adobo is the result of the eclectic in-fluences, both regional and historical, that come together in many Filipino dishes. “Philippine cooking probably reflects history more than a national cuisine,” says Cecilia Florencio, a nutri-tion professor at the University of the Philippines . Or to quote one local saying: Philip-
pine food was prepared by Malay set-tlers, spiced by the Chinese, stewed by the Spanish and hamburgerized by the Americans. Adobo is all but the last. From the northernmost stretch of islands of Batanes to the vinta-de-pendent islets of Tawi-Tawi, adobo is a staple cuisine along with other re-gional favorites like the papaitan for the Ilocanos, pinikpikan for the Ifugaos, the Bicol express for the Bicolanos, and the kinilaw for Visayans. No wonder, the first thing most Filipinos who have been abroad request when they come home is adobo. Adobo is prepared in regions of Lat-in America and Spain , but the cooking process is indigenous to the Philippines . According to historical records, when the Spanish invaded the Philippines in the late 16th century through Mexico City , they found an indigenous cook-ing process that involved stewing with vinegar. They referred to this method as “adobo.” Over time, dishes prepared in this manner came to be known by this name as well. Sifton even mention the history in his column. he pointed out: “The journalist and food historian Raymond Sokolov has made the point that the ingredients for adobo were present in the Philippines before (Ferdinand) Ma-gellan — only the name, which comes from a Spanish word for sauce, came later. ‘Lexical imperialism,’ he called this process.” But the main thing about adobo is that it is cook differently. Sifton wrote: “husbands argue with wives about ado-bo. Friends shoot each other dirty looks about the necessity of including coconut milk or soy sauce in the recipe. There are disputations over the kind of vin-egar to use, over the use of sugar, over the inclusion of garlic and how much of it. Some use chicken exclusively in the dish, others pork, some a combination of the two.” For those who have not tried adobo yet, the words of Yan Susanto, an occa-sional online writer, is an eye-opener:
“The flavor of this exquisite cuisine will certainly be liked by anyone who has tasted it the first time; they will even be asking for more after the first bite. The spicy flavor of the tenderized chicken and/or pork is so irresistible and the aroma will soothe your sense of smell and tease your taste buds.” Now are you ready to cook your own adobo? here’s one classic recipe whose estimated cooking time is about 50 minutes. What you need are the following: one-half kilo of pork cut in cubes and one-half kilo of chicken and cut into pieces, one head minced gar-lic, one-half diced yellow onion, one-half cup soy sauce, one cup vinegar, two cups of water, one teaspoon paprika, five bay leaves, four tablespoons of cooking oil or olive oil, two tablespoons corn-starch, and salt and pepper to taste. To cook adobo, follow these instruc-tions: In a big sauce pan or wok, heat two tablespoons of oil then sauté the minced garlic and onions. Add the pork and chicken to the pan. Add two cups of water, one-fourth cup of soy sauce, vinegar, paprika and the bay leaves. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes or when meat is tender. Remove the pork and chicken from the sauce pan and on another pan, heat cooking oil and brown the pork and chicken for a few minutes. Mix the browned pork and chicken back to the sauce and add cornstarch dissolved in water to thicken. Add salt and/or pep-per. Bring to a boil then simmer for an additional five minutes. Serve hot with the adobo gravy. “Adobo is usually served with rice, the staple food of the Filipinos,” wrote Susanto. “But most of the foreigners who visit the Philippines prefer to eat it just as it is because of its taste. In fact, most of the visitors in the country look for such a great cuisine while enjoying their Philippine vacation. The good thing is, hotels in the Philippines often serve adobo during breakfast as an ap-petizer.” Adobo, anyone?
by: Bai Fauziah Fatima Sinsuat Ambolodto, MBA
FOODIeS craving for a taste of Zamboanga’s infamous Ala-var sauce can say that it is quite difficult condiment to come by in Davao City with relatives and friends flying in from Zamboanga being the only source of fatty seafood good-ness. In fact, I have searched high and low for the prized sauce but still to no avail. Thus, I have decided to make my own recipe for those times I need a delicious seafood treat. Drawing my inspiration from the sauce, I came up with a recipe that is easy to make, affordable and could be used in any dish -- I have tried it with crabs, clams, fish and even tofu. Give it a try and surely you’d love it. happy cooking!Ingredients10 pcs prawns, cleaned, snipped, skin on and deveined1 medium sized ginger root, chopped and smashed 1 medium sized onion, chopped5 pcs garlic, minced1 pc red bell pepper, chargrilled, skinned, deseeded and minced 1 cup evaporated milk1/8 tsp atsuete powder 1/2 cup cheese, gratedcayenne pepper, adjust according to taste salt and pepper to taste oil butter Procedure1. In a sauce pan, heat oil and butter. Saute ginger until fragrant but not wilted. Mix in minced garlic and chopped onion. Stir constantly. Season mixture with salt and pepper. 2. Add the prawns. Stirring constantly until they turn or-ange. Simmer. It is imporant to not overcook the prawns, even with its skin on, as it would turn hard and gooeylike.3. Pour in evaporated milk. Simmer for a good minute or two. Once bubbles form at the corners, mix in red bell pep-per, atsuete powder and grated cheese. Stir. Cover and simmer until the cheese dissolves. 4. Remove the prawns from the pan and set aside. Let mix-ture simmer until it thickens and reduces.5. Strain sauce as to remove chunks of ginger and other in-gredients. In a separate plate, place prawns and drizzle with sauce and garnish with chopped chives. Serve hot over rice or as a pulutan. The sauce is also good with crabs, fish, clams, vegetables for the health buffs and even tofu provided that the tofu is hard and not the smooth silky one.
A homemade take on Alavar sauce!
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 2012 15EDGEDAVAO SPORTS
CHICAGO (AP) The fans gave Derrick Rose a standing
ovation before the game. There wasn’t much for them to cheer about in the end.
Jrue Holiday scored 26 points, Lou Williams add-ed 20 and the Philadel-phia 76ers beat Chicago 109-92 on Tuesday night to even their first-round series in the Bulls’ first game since Rose’s season-ending knee injury.
The superstar point guard received a standing ovation and waved to the crowd as he limped onto the court to present the game ball, then watched from a suite as the 76ers simply blitzed the Bulls in the third quarter.
They outscored Chi-cago 36-14 in the period, turning an eight-point deficit into an 83-69 lead,
and pulled even with the league’s top-seeded team.
Game 3 is Friday in Philadelphia.
‘’This game we caught fire and it was pretty hard to put it out,’’ Holiday said.
All the Bulls could do was shake their heads and vow to do better.
‘’Disappointed,’’ Chi-cago’s Joakim Noah said. ‘’Disappointing effort overall. We didn’t play well defensively. We didn’t play well offensively.’’
Holiday was 11 of 15 from the field, and the Sixers shot 59 percent overall. Williams came up big, going 8 of 13 after hit-ting just 1 of 6 shots in the opener, and Chicago prod-uct Evan Turner chipped in with 19 points, seven rebounds and six assists.
Noah led the Bulls with 21 points and eight rebounds. John Lucas
III scored 15 points, but Carlos Boozer scored just nine and Luol Deng finished with eight. More alarming, the Bulls simply couldn’t stop the Sixers, particularly in the third quarter.
Turner scored 11 points in the period, and Philadelphia wiped out a 55-47 deficit.
‘’That third quarter we played tonight was as good a quarter as I ever seen our team play as long as I’ve been with them,’’ Philadelphia coach Doug Collins said. ‘’We were active.’’
For the Bulls, that was about as bad as it gets.
They were unable to make any stops, and they couldn’t find a rhythm on offense, either.
‘’We kind of let our of-fense affect our defense,’’ Richard Hamilton said.
76ers tie Bulls 1-1
LOS ANGELES (AP) The Denver Nuggets ran the court and drove
the lane with all the inten-sity they lacked in their playoff opener. They dou-ble-teamed Andrew By-num, harassed Pau Gasol and scored relentlessly in the paint.
Nope, still not enough to beat Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. Not even enough to get a lead.
Bryant scored 38 points, Bynum followed up his triple-double with a ca-reer playoff-high 27 points and nine rebounds, and the Lakers weathered Denver’s late rally for a 104-100 vic-tory Tuesday night, taking a 2-0 series lead.
Gasol had 13 points, 10 rebounds and five as-sists for the third-seeded Lakers, who still haven’t trailed in two games de-spite several dicey mo-
ments in Game 2. They survived a much-improved effort by the Nuggets and Ty Lawson, who scored 25 points and led the fourth-quarter charge.
Bryant was too sharp in his 83rd career 30-point playoff game, more than anybody except Michael Jordan. After last season’s second-round ouster in their failed quest for a threepeat, Bryant and his teammates are healthier
and happier - and they’ve been too much for Denver.
‘’I think we’re just play-ing much better,’’ Bryant said. ‘’It’s tough to play against us, because there’s legitimately three guys you have to double-team.’’
Game 3 is Friday in Denver.
The Lakers didn’t get out of Staples Center with-out a little drama. Los An-geles’ 19-point lead in the third quarter dwindled
to four with 3 minutes to play, but Ramon Sessions scored four key points in the final 1:14 before Bry-ant’s icing free throws with 9.4 seconds left.
‘’I think losing last season, and the way we lost, we’re approaching this postseason much more focused,’’ Gasol said. ‘’We’re not overlooking any team, any game. We’re doing whatever it takes to be successful. ... Over-
all, I think we played well again. We just allowed them to play their game a little more than in the first game.’’
Lawson shook his aw-ful series opener with 17 second-half points, but the sixth-seeded Nuggets lost their ninth straight road playoff game despite play-ing much closer to their preferred speedy tempo after the Lakers muzzled them in Game 1.
Lakers lead Nuggets 2-0NEW YORK — New
York Knicks for-ward Amare Stou-
demire, who smashed his left hand into a window protecting a fire extin-guisher after a loss, will miss the next game after minor surgery to repair a small muscle.
The NBA club said on Tuesday that Stoudemire will not play when the Mi-ami Heat visit New York on Thursday. The Heat defeated New York 104-94 on Monday at Miami, prompting Stoudemire to punch the glass in frustra-tion.
Stoudemire suffered a large cut on the side of his hand and had surgery to repair a small muscle, ensuring he will not play when the Heat try to take a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven first-round Eastern Conference playoff series.
The star forward is listed as doubtful for game
four on Sunday but the Knicks said they will re-evaluate Stoudemire’s sta-tus before then.
“We all have done things out of anger that we regret. That makes us human,” Stoudemire said in a Twitter posting early Tuesday. “Bad timing on my part. Sorry guys. This to(o) shall pass.”
Stoudemire averaged 17.5 points and 7.8 re-bounds a game this sea-son. The Knicks went 14-5 without Stoudemire, including 9-4 late in the season with Carmelo An-thony moved to power for-ward while a bulging back disc sidelined Stoudemire.
But Iman Shumpert played a key role for the Knicks during that spurt and Shumpert has already been lost for the remain-der of the playoffs after suffering a knee injury in New York’s game one loss last Saturday.
Stoudemire to miss Game 3Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers celebrates his basket and foul with Devin Ebanks on way to a 104-100 win over the Denver Nuggets during Game Two of the Western Conference Quarterfi-nals in the 2012 NBA Playoffs at Staples Center on Wednesday in Los Angeles, California.
Richard Hamilton of the Chicago Bulls tries to get off a a shot against Spencer Hawes of the Philadelphia 76ers in Game Two of the Eastern Conference Quar-terfinals during the 2012 NBA Playoffs at the United Center on Wednesday in Chicago, Illinois. The 76ers defeated the Bulls 109-92.
VOL.5 ISSUE 42 • MAY 3, 201216 EDGEDAVAOSPORTS
THE Davao Summer-fest is expected to give Davao City a
headway in sports tour-ism.
This was the pro-nouncement of Davao Summerfest organizers as the city’s summer fes-tival of arts, culture and sports formally reel off this month.
Davao Summerfest spokesperson Orly Esca-rilla and project director Neil Bravo bared dur-ing the weekly Club 888 forum at the Eagles Bar of Marco Polo Hotel that this year’s summerfest is bigger and more compre-hensive than last year’s edition.
“The concept is a com-prehensive activity that promotes sports and arts, capability-building, pro-
motion of sports tourism, competition and busi-ness,” Bravo said.
“We are expecting this activity to boost tourism and business. We believe that the money we pour in for this activity will bring more revenues for the city,” Escarilla added.
This week, the Ritmo Dabawenyo arts work-shop started on Tuesday and will run until May 5 at the People’s Park.
The Davao Summer-fest sports camps, the first stage of the month-long summer sports and arts festival, will open on May 7 at various venues.
Camps in football and basketball will be staged from May 7 to 18 and will be catering to close to 4,000 children in Davao City.
Gains in sports tourism seen in Summerfest
LINGAYEN, Pangas-inan (PNA) - Some 6,000 athletes from
11 regions of the country are now in Pangasinan to participate in the Pal-arong Pambansa which is set to open May 6 and ends on May 12.
This was disclosed by Atty. Verna Nava-Perez, task force Palaro com-mander, saying that all the other athletes from six more regions are ex-pected to arrive today until Saturday.
Overall, some 10,000 athletes in both the ele-mentary and high school divisions are coming for the week-long national games being hosted by the province of Pangas-inan, only for the second time since 1995.
Though the games will begin on Sunday, this year’s Palarong Pam-bansa will officially open on Monday in ceremo-nies slated at the Narciso Ramos Sports and Civic Center (NRSCC) here with President Benigno Aquino III as guest of honor and speaker.
Already in Pangasin-an are the athletes from the Cordillera Adminis-trative Region (CAR), and
Regions 3, 4, 4B, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
It was the athletes from Region 4B (Mind-oro, Masbate Romblon and Palawan area) who arrived first since early last week.
Nava said still to ar-rive are athletes from host Region 1, and those from Regions 2, 11, 12 and the Autonomous Re-gion in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
Nava said it is now all systems go for the 2012 Palarong Pambansa as she announced that all the playing venues as well as the billeting ar-eas in Lingayen, Dagu-pan and San Carlos cities, Binmaley, Calasiao and Bugallon are now ready, except for just but a few finishing touches.
All the athletes who have arrived so far have in fact participated in the celebration of the Panga-sinan Pistay Dayat (sea festival) last May 1 and the Dagupan Bangus Fes-tival last April 30.
Many of them are now practicing at the NRSCC ovals and grounds, beach front in Lingayen and in other playing venues. (PNA)
6,000 athletes in Palaro
The football camp will be held from May 7-11 (Batch 1) and May 14-18 (Batch 2) at the Davao Crocodile Park football fields. The camp will be supervised by Christian Ea and a team of coaches from the Davao Football Association (DFA) and Crocodile Park Football Academy.
For basketball, the
camp will be staged in various venues cover-ing the three districts of Davao City.
The Davao Summer-fest is organized by the Duaw Davao Festival Foundation as the official festival manager of the city government of Davao. The Summerfest formally opened last Friday at the Davao People’s Park.
CAMPS. Kids take part in the Montana Basketball Camp run by pri-vate organization Montana Basketball Team at the Montana Gym. Similar basketball camps will start as part of the Davao Summer-fest on May 7 at various venues in Davao City. (Boy Lim)
