Saturday, December 03, 2005

Human Resource Is Aklan’s Best Asset

By Recto I. Vidal
“Aklan’s human resource is still its best asset to spur provincial activity and save it from the clutches of poverty now bedeviling at least 33 percent of its populace.”
This is the recent assessment made by former OIC governor Jollie Pelayo, chairman of JS Contractors, a recruitment agency credited for providing overseas employment for at least 50,000 workers abroad since the 1970’s.
Pelayo corrected the misconception that tourism is Aklan’s greatest resource considering that the Aklanons have not “maximized” its presence in the famed tourist island resort.
“Its unfortunate that majority of the resort owners are not Aklanons. What’s more appalling is that most of those who are employed there are not even Aklanons,” Pelayo lamented.
He also rectified the notion that Aklan is an agricultural province describing its output as “negative” contending that it no longer holds the title of being the rice granary of the country during the sixties.
Pelayo also painted grim prospects for Aklan’s fisheries sector as he expressed sadness as he described the industry as having been “prostituted by unscrupulous businessmen and middlemen who have established cartels to the detriment of the small fisherfolks.”
Having said all these, Aklan being a third class province is left with no other viable resource except its highly skilled human resource.
“If we can send a good number of our province mates for overseas employment abroad, it could undoubtedly create a domino effect which in turn can energize the economy of this province,” he enthused.
Pelayo inaugurated last week the Nippon Training center, a subsidiary of JS Contractor tasked in providing skills training program for Taiwan bound caretakers. /MP

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