* Message of Aklan Gov. Carlito S. Marquez during the 39th Induction Ceremonies of the Rotary Club of Kalibo and the Rotary Spouses of the Rotary Club of Kalibo held at the Gov. Corazon Legaspi Cabagnot Memorial Tourism and Training Center, at Old Buswang, Kalibo, Aklan on July 23, 2005.
May I extend the warm greetings of the people of Aklan and their Provincial Government to all Rotarians and the Rotary Spouses of the Rotary Club of Kalibo on the occasion of your 39th Induction Ceremonies and your observance of the first year of another century after one hundred years of existence and service to humankind.
With this, goes my sincere congratulations to the incoming and outgoing officers of the club led by incoming President Epifanio “Panski” Rebuelta and outgoing President Victor “Vic” Santamaria.
Indeed, Rotary Clubs in Aklan had become an institution, as far as service to our constituents is concerned. Rotary International in this part of the province had become, and will continue to do so, as dynamic partner of the government sector in alleviating the plight of the less privileged and marginalized sectors of our communities. This you had proven through the years of your existence in this province even as Rotary International has already achieved one century of service to humanity.
“SERVICE ABOVE SELF”. To the Rotarians, this is certainly true and rightfully, Rotarians can claim without contradictions. But most of the time, skeptics will raise eyebrows if Service Above Self is used to describe many of our government leaders and politicians in this country. Perhaps, in this critical period in the economic and political life of our nation, everybody might all be thinking that if only political leaders sincerely clothe themselves of the honest intention of serving our people above self, we may not be encountering this very serious problem our country and people are facing right now.
In our national life as Filipinos, these are trying times, uncertain times when we do not know when all of us will be falling or when to recover. These times breed insecurity among our people, to many, probably desperation, and certainly, to the poor majority, these are times of untold hardships brought about by the devaluation of our currency as weighed against the U.S. dollar and the never ending upward escalation of fuel prices which has domino effect on all prime commodities needed by the people particularly in the countrysides.
I am reading the message of the President of Rotary International, Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammar who said that For Rotary Year 2005-2006, the Rotary movement will be having two major emphasis: That on Literacy, along with water, health and hunger, and an additional focus on public image.
Public image as Rotary’s second emphasis may not be hard to achieve. In fact, Rotary had plenty of it to spare after almost a century of service to the peoples of the world. I may even venture to say that Rotary International, including the Rotarians in Kalibo, has far better image and credibility in the eyes of our peoples in the world. Rotarians for sure have better image and credibility than political and government leaders of the world, because in serving, Rotarians indeed place service above self in its truest sense and meaning. Perhaps, if governments are run Rotary-like, the peoples of the world may not be facing all the ills of society. In our case as a nation Rotarians might have better pills for the sick economy and political instability.
It is in your first emphasis that we can find common ground in partnering ourselves in the private sector and government on how we can best achieve our goals in improving literacy, mitigating hunger and installing environmental and health infrastructure facilities for the good of our people.
Admittedly, we have a high literacy rate in the province of Aklan. However, it is very ironic that every year, we are still faced with the stark reality of the lack of classrooms, teachers and many other facilities in our school systems particularly in the public schools. I am happy to note that Rotary International, in partnership with other government and non-government organizations had plunged itself in helping government construct school buildings and institutionalized award system for deserving teachers in the private and public schools.
You must have noted that as years go by, the allocation of the national government for the construction of classrooms had been reduced and placing the burden to remedy the problem more on the part of the local government units. Million of funds of the provincial government under the control of the office of the provincial governor and the Sangguniang Panlalawigan members of Aklan goes to the solicitations of many PTCA’s provincewide, all funds for construction, repair, and improvement of school facilities.
Then Aklan Gov. Florencio T. Miraflores, now our Congressman, started to institutionalize in the provincial government the grant of scholarships to poor and deserving sons and daughters of many indigent families in the province. Some P8 million had been earmarked yearly for this purpose. This is not to count the several other million pesos spared by the provincial government for the salaries and allowances of school teachers which fill the acute lack of mentors in our public elementary and secondary schools in Aklan. And yet, the provincial government do not waiver in our commitment to help the education sector in this province, perhaps sharing a great percentage of the small pie budgeted for provincial government operations.
Let us also admit the fact that many of our household families particularly in the rural areas still do not have access to potable water supply systems. And again, the provincial government always set aside a certain percentage of our 20 percent internal revenue allotment development fund to mitigate the ill-effects on the health of our people brought about by inaccessibility to potable water supply.
We are doing our very best to improve agricultural productivity as a vehicle to erasing widespread poverty among our people which as of the latest data, more than 30 percent of our families are still living way below the poverty threshold level.
We have found new breakthrough in our rice production through hybridization of rice crops and the initial result was very encouraging with every farmer engaging in hybrid rice production producing some 180 to 240 cavans per hectare. We are expanding our hybrid rice effective area provincewide after we were successful in our pilot farms consisting of 50 hectares in the Pacto De Sangre Agrarian Reform Community in New Washington, Aklan.
We are diversifying crop production. Just this week we have launched another mangrove reforestation project in Guinbaliwan, New Washington which is inspired by the highly successful plantation at Kalibo’s Bakhawan Eco-Park. Soon, we will be launching our abaca plantation project in Libacao, Aklan where the provincial government will identify one hundred hectares of land, to be planted to abaca. This will be operated and managed by the provincial government.
The province continues to pin its economic takeoff in our robust tourism industry bannered by Boracay and continue to nurture our small and medium enterprise and indigenous products bannered by our world famous piña cloth. We have institutionalized the economic enterprise development of the province, as a challenge to open up new economic frontiers, maintain economic stability, and promote responsible stewardship for good governance and public service.
With Rotary in our midst, we are assured of a dynamic partner in taking the cudgels for our poor constituents.
Again, congratulations Rotarians of Aklan. I am one among you because until now, I am your honorary member.
Thank you very much. /MPhttp://madyaas_pen@yahoo.com
May I extend the warm greetings of the people of Aklan and their Provincial Government to all Rotarians and the Rotary Spouses of the Rotary Club of Kalibo on the occasion of your 39th Induction Ceremonies and your observance of the first year of another century after one hundred years of existence and service to humankind.
With this, goes my sincere congratulations to the incoming and outgoing officers of the club led by incoming President Epifanio “Panski” Rebuelta and outgoing President Victor “Vic” Santamaria.
Indeed, Rotary Clubs in Aklan had become an institution, as far as service to our constituents is concerned. Rotary International in this part of the province had become, and will continue to do so, as dynamic partner of the government sector in alleviating the plight of the less privileged and marginalized sectors of our communities. This you had proven through the years of your existence in this province even as Rotary International has already achieved one century of service to humanity.
“SERVICE ABOVE SELF”. To the Rotarians, this is certainly true and rightfully, Rotarians can claim without contradictions. But most of the time, skeptics will raise eyebrows if Service Above Self is used to describe many of our government leaders and politicians in this country. Perhaps, in this critical period in the economic and political life of our nation, everybody might all be thinking that if only political leaders sincerely clothe themselves of the honest intention of serving our people above self, we may not be encountering this very serious problem our country and people are facing right now.
In our national life as Filipinos, these are trying times, uncertain times when we do not know when all of us will be falling or when to recover. These times breed insecurity among our people, to many, probably desperation, and certainly, to the poor majority, these are times of untold hardships brought about by the devaluation of our currency as weighed against the U.S. dollar and the never ending upward escalation of fuel prices which has domino effect on all prime commodities needed by the people particularly in the countrysides.
I am reading the message of the President of Rotary International, Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammar who said that For Rotary Year 2005-2006, the Rotary movement will be having two major emphasis: That on Literacy, along with water, health and hunger, and an additional focus on public image.
Public image as Rotary’s second emphasis may not be hard to achieve. In fact, Rotary had plenty of it to spare after almost a century of service to the peoples of the world. I may even venture to say that Rotary International, including the Rotarians in Kalibo, has far better image and credibility in the eyes of our peoples in the world. Rotarians for sure have better image and credibility than political and government leaders of the world, because in serving, Rotarians indeed place service above self in its truest sense and meaning. Perhaps, if governments are run Rotary-like, the peoples of the world may not be facing all the ills of society. In our case as a nation Rotarians might have better pills for the sick economy and political instability.
It is in your first emphasis that we can find common ground in partnering ourselves in the private sector and government on how we can best achieve our goals in improving literacy, mitigating hunger and installing environmental and health infrastructure facilities for the good of our people.
Admittedly, we have a high literacy rate in the province of Aklan. However, it is very ironic that every year, we are still faced with the stark reality of the lack of classrooms, teachers and many other facilities in our school systems particularly in the public schools. I am happy to note that Rotary International, in partnership with other government and non-government organizations had plunged itself in helping government construct school buildings and institutionalized award system for deserving teachers in the private and public schools.
You must have noted that as years go by, the allocation of the national government for the construction of classrooms had been reduced and placing the burden to remedy the problem more on the part of the local government units. Million of funds of the provincial government under the control of the office of the provincial governor and the Sangguniang Panlalawigan members of Aklan goes to the solicitations of many PTCA’s provincewide, all funds for construction, repair, and improvement of school facilities.
Then Aklan Gov. Florencio T. Miraflores, now our Congressman, started to institutionalize in the provincial government the grant of scholarships to poor and deserving sons and daughters of many indigent families in the province. Some P8 million had been earmarked yearly for this purpose. This is not to count the several other million pesos spared by the provincial government for the salaries and allowances of school teachers which fill the acute lack of mentors in our public elementary and secondary schools in Aklan. And yet, the provincial government do not waiver in our commitment to help the education sector in this province, perhaps sharing a great percentage of the small pie budgeted for provincial government operations.
Let us also admit the fact that many of our household families particularly in the rural areas still do not have access to potable water supply systems. And again, the provincial government always set aside a certain percentage of our 20 percent internal revenue allotment development fund to mitigate the ill-effects on the health of our people brought about by inaccessibility to potable water supply.
We are doing our very best to improve agricultural productivity as a vehicle to erasing widespread poverty among our people which as of the latest data, more than 30 percent of our families are still living way below the poverty threshold level.
We have found new breakthrough in our rice production through hybridization of rice crops and the initial result was very encouraging with every farmer engaging in hybrid rice production producing some 180 to 240 cavans per hectare. We are expanding our hybrid rice effective area provincewide after we were successful in our pilot farms consisting of 50 hectares in the Pacto De Sangre Agrarian Reform Community in New Washington, Aklan.
We are diversifying crop production. Just this week we have launched another mangrove reforestation project in Guinbaliwan, New Washington which is inspired by the highly successful plantation at Kalibo’s Bakhawan Eco-Park. Soon, we will be launching our abaca plantation project in Libacao, Aklan where the provincial government will identify one hundred hectares of land, to be planted to abaca. This will be operated and managed by the provincial government.
The province continues to pin its economic takeoff in our robust tourism industry bannered by Boracay and continue to nurture our small and medium enterprise and indigenous products bannered by our world famous piña cloth. We have institutionalized the economic enterprise development of the province, as a challenge to open up new economic frontiers, maintain economic stability, and promote responsible stewardship for good governance and public service.
With Rotary in our midst, we are assured of a dynamic partner in taking the cudgels for our poor constituents.
Again, congratulations Rotarians of Aklan. I am one among you because until now, I am your honorary member.
Thank you very much. /MPhttp://madyaas_pen@yahoo.com
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