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<img border="0" src="newspper.bmp" width="172" height="166">N E W S

Farmers want Mike A land for CARP <img border="0" src="farmer.jpg" align="right" width="333" height="496">

BACOLOD CITY—The Task Force Mapalad has asked the government to put under land reform a 157-hectare farm in Negros Occidental allegedly owned by First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo.

But Rep. Ignacio Arroyo Jr. (Negros Occ., 5th District) explained that a corporation known as Rivulet Agro-Industrial Corp., not his brother, owned the piece of property located in Isabela town.

In a statement released yesterday, the TFM said the DAR should resume the process of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in Hacienda Bacan in Barangay Guintubdan, Isabela, Negros Occidental, as the beneficiaries have waited long enough.

Further delay in the inclusion of the property in the agrarian reform program would constitute grave social injustice, the TFM added.

TFM president Jose Rodito Angeles said that six years had passed since the DAR provincial office told the 68 potential beneficiaries, 22 of them belonging to the TFM, that they were waiting for Mike Arroyo’s letter of intent so they could proceed with the valuation of the property.

Offer to sell

The government placed Hacienda Bacan under CARP coverage through compulsory acquisition in 2000, but Representative Arroyo, then president of Rivulet Agro-Industrial Corp., offered it to CARP under the voluntary offer to sell scheme in April 2001, TFM said.

Teresita Depeñoso, Negros Occidental provincial agrarian reform officer, said the local government unit had foreclosed the farm owned by Rivulet for non-payment of taxes and it was repurchased by Mike Arroyo.

Depeñoso said they would need a legal opinion from the Department of Justice since the property has been reclassified into an industrial estate.

She recalled that the local government reclassified the property into an industrial estate in 2005 since there was a proposal to build an ethanol plant on the property.

Reclassified

With the reclassification, Depeñoso said, they have to determine first whether the property could be covered under the agrarian reform program.

For this reason, Depeñoso said, the processing of the property for inclusion in the program has been held in abeyance.

At the same time, she said, the Land Bank would not valuate the land because it has been reclassified.

She said the property’s land-owner has to formalize the conversion of the land into an industrial estate by paying the required capital gains tax with the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Negros issue

In another land reform dispute, Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman and landowner Bob Cuenca has signed an agreement that could pave the way for a peaceful resolution to the conflict at the Hacienda Velez-Malaga in La Castellana, Negros Occidental.

Los Baños adopts students’ campaign to reduce plastics use<img border="0" src="plastics.jpg" align="right" width="500" height="375">
Niña Catherine Calleja
Southern Luzon Bureau

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna -- Students from the University of the Philippines Los Baños have scored one for the environment.

A class project of graduate students to reduce plastic usage has turned into a campaign of an entire town.

Dubbed as "Bring Your Own Bag" or BYOB, the group project of 11 students of the Masters of Science in Development Communication encouraged the Laguna provincial and Los Baños municipal governments to reduce the use of plastics, Teata Cortero, one of the graduate students, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.

Part of the group's project was the distribution of bags made of "coco-cloth" (katsa) donated by bakeries in Los Baños.

The group has also created a video explaining why plastic should not be used, which was later aired everyday over the community cable channel.

Launched on September 18, the campaign also included a forum and fashion shows on bags.

The group also sold pins with statements like, "Hindi ako plastic (I am not plastic).”

"We have decided to campaign on plastic reduction because plastic bags have caused a lot of problems like flashfloods and other problems in the sewerage system and waterways," Cortero said.

She acknowledged that most people were not aware that plastics "take a millennium to disintegrate."

"Plastics, most of which are toxic, can cause so much harm to our environment," she noted.

Cortero said the campaign became successful because the Los Baños community and the UPLB students cooperated.

She said their group believed the project would be sustained by the community.

In response to this, the municipal government here has decided to carry out a "test run" on the reduction of the use of plastic bags in supermarkets and malls starting October 15.

    Mayor Cesar Perez said they have been waging an awareness campaign on plastic reduction since 2004 when the municipal council decided it was time "to control the source of plastic" -- the retailers, supermarket, and malls.

    He said it was hard to manage the six to eight truckloads of non-biodegradable items, mostly plastic, they were collecting every week.

    Prior to the test-run, the local government will issue a letter listing the guidelines to all business establishments.

"Either the buyers would bring their own bags or ‘bayong’ (baskets) or, if necessary, they'll buy the plastic from the establishment," Perez said.

Buying the plastic bag would encourage people to reuse these or refrain from using these altogether, he said.

Perez said the test run would end sometime in December and afterwards, he would issue an ordinance regulating the use of plastic bags.

"We are now drafting the ordinance and studying other ways in reducing the rampant use of plastic," he said.

The town executive promised to hold continuous dialogues with the community and private sector on this issue.

Sea grass weavers build own niche in export market<img border="0" src="seagrass.bmp" align="right" width="500" height="328">
Ephraim Aguilar
Inquirer

LIBON, Albay--Turning the seemingly unusable sea grass (Rhycospora Corymbosa) into profitable crafts has been a traditional home-based enterprise in Del Rosario village in this town for many generations.

But how could humble workers with simple raw materials and only their bare hands as their tools create their own niche in the local and foreign markets?

Creativity and hard work are their only capital as they rely on government and nongovernment help to establish their business, attests Rey Seda, president of the Del Rosario Handicraft Producers Association (Delrohapa).

Locally known as the "agas" or "ragiwdiw," the sea grass grows to about one meter high with distinctly triangular stems and leaves that are broad and long.

The sea grass can be found mostly in marshlands and rice paddies in Southern Luzon. It grows well in irrigated lands as when a rice paddy is left for fallowing.

Under the ingenious hands of Del Rosario's weavers, dried sea grass stalks and leaves are fashioned into baskets, hampers, boxes, containers, bags, place mats, bowls, floor mats, decors and other useful items.

Sea grass products from this town have already reached Italy, Canada, Thailand, Austria, New Zealand and other parts of Europe and the United States through exporters who ask the community crafts association to produce the products for them.

From individual family enterprises, sea grass-weaving became a communal industry with the rise of the Delrohapa in 1997.

Weaving tradition

Seda, 41, recalls seeing his mother weave agas during his childhood years when the craft was a common form of livelihood for almost every family in the village.

Even though sea grass-weaving has evolved into a communal enterprise, weaving traditions in families has been preserved to this day.

Seda says that normally, in a household, women act as weavers while their husbands serve as gatherers of raw materials. Husbands usually have other forms of livelihood like farming and livestock raising.

Emalyn Sazon, 39, Delrohapa finance officer, started weaving when she was 12.

She says she learned agas weaving from her parents and elder siblings. Earnings from the sea grass craft help her send her three children to school.

Sazon adds she has passed on the skill of weaving to her children just as her parents taught her and her siblings the trade.

In the village, raw materials and woven sea grass items are queued on roadsides for drying while housewives weave right in their homes or would meet in groups to weave with other housewives to enjoy a good conversation.

Still existing

In 1997, the municipal government and the regional Department of Trade and Industry saw the market potentials of the sea grass products in Libon.

They organized village-based cooperatives, one of which was the Delrohapa, and gave them technical inputs on how to improve and market their products.

Now, only the Delrohapa of 57 members exists while the other cooperatives in other villages have been dissolved.

Seda recalls that many associations were formed before the Delrohapa, but all failed due to mismanagement.

"The people at that time lost confidence in the associations being formed and chose to work independently without any affiliation."

Around 70 percent of the weaving households in Barangay Del Rosario are members of the existing association.

The Delrohapa is a member of the Community Crafts Association of the Philippines Inc. (CCAP), a nongovernment association that uses development marketing as a socioeconomic development intervention.

Providing its affiliates with purchase orders from domestic and foreign markets, CCAP is one of the established domestic buyers of sea grass products from Del Rosario.

Biggest earnings

The Delrohapa recorded its biggest earnings this year from the association's first purchase order of P6,000.

Seda says that in the first two quarters of 2007 alone, from January to July, they already have a total of P1.5-million purchase orders from different buyers combined.

He recalls that in 2005, the association earned a total of P100,000 and in 2006, P300,000.

"Our annual income would depend on samples we created the previous year. The designs are usually prescribed by potential buyers."

In 2004, their designs failed to meet the requirement of the buyers and caused a decline in sales the following year but this did not deter the Delrohapa weavers.

This all the more inspired the weavers to improve the quality of their work by implementing quality control measures. "We learned that quality is always more important than quantity," says Seda.

He says they thoroughly screen the finished products being submitted by the weavers.

Direct export potential

Prices of sea grass products vary depending on the size and design.

Small and simple boxes and place mats can be bought for as low as P5 each. Floor mats that are 124 centimeters by 122 centimeters in size are worth at least P250 while bigger sizes and more complicated designs are worth up to P1,500.

The most marketable products are hampers and laundry boxes.

In 2004, the Delrohapa through the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) received a grant from the Canadian International Development Agency (Cida) to fund the installation of facilities and buy production tools.

This was used to help "what was once a poor association without capital and enough means to expand business," according to Cynthia Olaguer, business development division chief of DTI-Albay.

The DTI is now slowly implementing a development plan for the sea grass industry in Libon with the goal of increased production and market expansion.

Rodrigo Aguilar, assistant regional director of DTI-Bicol and concurrent provincial director of DTI-Albay, says that DTI will continue to give technical inputs to the cooperative to make them fit for direct export. "They must continually work on new designs, improve the quality of their work and increase their workforce."

Libon is a second class Albay municipality with a population of 66,213 people in 12,572 households. It is regionally known as the "Rice Granary of Albay" but it has identified sea grass as its town product.

Local iPhone users doubt Apple warning<img border="0" src="iphone.jpg" align="right" width="276" height="500">
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines -- Some Filipino owners of hacked iPhones doubt Apple's recent warning against using unlocking software to allow them to use the handset outside the United States.

A debate is raging among members of the Philippine MAC Users Group who also questioned the authenticity of the Apple warning issued this week.

Apple, however, confirmed with INQUIRER.net that it has indeed issued a warning this week.

"Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed," the company said in an e-mailed copy of the warning.

Apple said it plans to release the next iPhone software update, containing many new features including the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store later this week.

"Apple strongly discourages users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones. Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty. The permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone's warranty," the computer company said.

Deepblue, a PhilMUG member, argued that Apple's warning should be taken with "a grain of salt," adding it might be just part of the company's scare tactics.

Another user named Karlo also doubted Apple's warning as he argued that the company might be "contractually" obligated to at least make attempts to prevent and discourage unlocking of the iPhone's software.

"What is it that can't be reset to factory conditions? You could always just re-flash it to the original firmware and Apple would never know," the user said.

Some local users said that hackers would eventually find a "workaround" in the next iPhone software update.

Elbert Cuenca, three-year chairman of PhilMUG, estimated that there are now at least a thousand users of iPhone in the Philippines.

Among PhilMUG users, there are now 30 to 40 users, Cuenca said.

Lately, he said that he saw unlocked iPhone units sold in Greenhills in San Juan and a popular local retail store. One store even sells one unlocked unit for P50,000.

"We also heard that people are bringing in unlocked iPhone units from Singapore and Hong Kong," he added.

Cuenca said the debate over the Apple warning emerged because initially the official statement was not available on the computer company's website.

"Apple has said that it would not actively pursue a lock down on unlocked iPhones. Based on our understanding, Apple is saying that if it breaks, they won't support it," Cuenca added.

Cuenca said there is currently no user agreement whenever iPhone owners activate their units.

Local users have started using the iPhone after it became possible to access a local mobile network without using a roaming arrangement with US provider AT&T.

The Apple iPhone, which combines a mobile phone with the company's iconic iPod music player, has not yet been released in Southeast Asia.

iPhones in the US are exclusively available on AT&T's mobile network.

Philippines looking to import more chicken<img border="0" src="chicken.bmp" align="right" width="360" height="270">

The Philippines agriculture department is likely to approve more chicken imports, due to a shortage of the meat, as well as the projected increase in demand during the Christmas season.

The three million kgs of chicken that importers were proposing to buy would comprise less than 1% of the Philippines’ annual consumption of 450 million head, said Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, adding that this would only be temporary.

He also stated that the increase in imports would satisfy the traditional increase in demand in the last quarter. "In the same manner, the shortage is also the reason for the increase in egg prices," he said.

Yap said the Philippines imported a record 32 million kgs of chicken in the last quarter in 2006, which consequently discouraged poultry raisers from producing more birds in the first quarter this year.

Additionally, the drought experienced in the country has worsened the situation.

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