Is Guisano Coming?
MAASIN CITY – Is the Gaisano department chain store planning to establish a branch in Maasin City or not? That is the one million peso question that city hall and provincial officials appear to disagree on.
City Mayor Maloney Samaco says he knows nothing about the plan and neither did City Councilor Nestor Sy the Chairman of the City’s Committee on Business Enterprises. However Governor Damian Mercado believes otherwise and confirmed this in a text interview with the Southern Leyte Times when he answered Yes to our question ”Is Gaisano planning to build a mall at the reclamation site?
A businessman, who requested anonymity, said the plan was a “done deal” and the only bottleneck was where the mall should be located.
He said Gaisano wanted it at the reclamation area so they could have ample space for parking, but the city wanted it located at the old city commercial complex.
Engineer Jose Cobile a Maasinhon now living in the United States had warned city residents in a letter to SLT that the reclamation site was unstable and could not support any sizable multi-storied structure because the materials used as fillers were not endemic to the environment and would pulverize when sea water seeped in.
Sources at the city engineer’s office have refuted Cobile’s claim and insist that the reclamation base had solidified and was strong enough to support tall buildings.
  
Hinunangan has no NFA rice
HINUNANGAN TOWN - This once rich agricultural town known as the “rice granary of the province” now has a severe rice shortage and as of August 1, 2008 there was no NFA rice outlets there.
According to Jose Alcober the SLT correspondent for the Pacific Area residents were now buying rice at P45 a kilo as compared to NFA subsidized rice which costs only 19 pesos.
He said 40 percent of the lands there which were planted to rice had been practically abandoned because the children of the farmers had gone abroad to work, and their parents were now too old to manage the fields themselves. “And besides,” he added “they were now receiving monthly stipends from their children and could live comfortably without toiling in the fields.”
Alcober said that the farmers who were still cultivating their fields were at the mercy of rice merchants who loaned them money in exchange for their future harvests.
“The bottom line is that farmers only get to keep enough rice for themselves to last a couple of months because of the usurious rates the rice merchants were charging them.
“ It’s an endless cycle!”
He said there was also the water problem since the NIA only provided irrigation for the lowest lying rice fields of the town, and they had no siphoning facility, so the water would drown the rice stalks when it rained heavily.
“People here have to go to neighboring towns to buy NFA rice and spend hours lining up for their allocations, so that by the time they reach home, they were hungry enough to consume all the rice they bought.” .
Alcober said this was why Congressman Roger Mercado’s agricultural scholarship program was considered by residents there as top priority.
“The town needs to train a new generation of farmers who will manage the rice fields there profitably so the town can regain its reputation as the rice bowl of Southern Leyte.”
(By RUEVIVAR M. REYES)
Red Cross Chief dies
ANAHAWAN TOWN – Red Cross Chapter Administrator Romeo Selabeo Orilla died last Friday, he was 49 years old.
He was being treated for colon cancer at the Anahawan District Hospital where he died peacefully at 12:30 in the afternoon with his sisters and brothers by his side.
Born in Barangay Hinatagon , Saint Bernard, Orilla rose from the ranks to became one of the youngest Red Cross Chapter Administrators in the country.
This was his second stint as Red Cross chief here having served as administrator in the province in the mid-1990s.
Orilla who had been promoted as head of the Red Cross’s Youth Department in Manila was reassigned here after the Red Cross building materials scandal in 2004 broke out.
He replaced Erick Macabuhay who had been implicated in the landslide relocation mess and had to resign.
Orilla will be buried at the Assumption Gardens on August 12.
(By AMR)
 
Tigbawanon slams illegal rice mill
TIGBAWANON - Liberato Jualo a resident of Barangay Tigbawan, Maasin City visited the Southern Leyte Times editorial office last Monday to complain about a rice mill next to his house which the DENR, RHU and the city treasurer claimed was illegal and had no sanitary permit to operate.
He said he filled a complaint against the owner in 2002 and that the Rural Health Inspector promised to inspect the rice mill again to insure that its owner Manuel Espera had moved the rice mill at least 25 meters from the complainant’s dwelling. He said the rice mill was still there and he hoped that by publishing the matter in SLT someone at city hall would (finally) do something about his problem
He said when the rice mill’s husking machine was turned on his whole house vibrated, and that the pollution it caused had affected his family’s health.
(By CLINT CABALUNA)
  
|
