ALABEL, Sarangani (February 21, 2011) – Capitol employees represented by the Sarangani Province Employee’s Union (SPEU) signified their commitment to a more efficient and effective public service to Sarangani constituents by signing the Collective Negotiation Agreement (CNA) Monday morning (February 21) with the provincial government. SPEU is the only legitimate labor organization of Sarangani provincial government. “It’s the third time that we’ve been doing this (signing of CNA),” Governor Migs Dominguez, representing the provincial government as the agency, said. “First, we all agreed to keep your benefits on status quo and you showed sacrifices in order to help our province. Second, we were able to up and increased the benefits,” Dominguez said. “This time it’s different because of the challenge by giving the members more accountability and responsibility based on agreed targets between the union and the management,” he added. “This means you receive your benefits with the responsibilities that go with it as government employees. That would be fair enough.” Governor Dominguez further reminded provincial employees of their shared responsibility to attain progress in the province. “As the union president, I assume all responsibilities but I need the cooperation of everyone for our own general welfare,” SPEU president Anacleto “Bobby” Saya-ang said in response. “I believe that if we are serious and sincere, nothing is impossible,” Saya-ang said. “We will give all the legal support that we can give from the Sanggunian to ensure that what is due to you will go to you,” Vice Governor Steve Chiongbian Solon said. Solon said he incidentally “rehearsed” being the acting governor in the past two months and realized the difficulty in managing scarce resources. “But let us learn to use them wisely,” Solon told employees. Provincial Board Member Eugene Alzate, author of the establishment of the labor management council in 2003, recalled the employees’ long struggle for the realization of the employees’ union though its first incentives were disallowed by the Commission on Audit at that time. “Hopefully the CNI (Collective Negotiation Incentive) this 2011 will pass through very smoothly in accordance with the standard accounting rules and regulations,” he added. Alzate thanked the leadership of Governor Dominguez as the CNA went smoothly with the management, urging employees to reciprocate their collective incentives with collective commitment to serve the province especially the poorest communities. The CNA stipulates an 80 percent appropriation from the agency out of the total yearend Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE) savings for all officials and employees for 2011-2013 “provided he/she had served for at least six months in service in the provincial government prior to the signing of the CNA”. SPEU, a registered rank-and-file employees’ association by the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Labor and Employment in 2002, has at present 648 registered members and officers. The CNA also covers educational and professional development programs, retirement benefits, merits and promotions, enhanced leave benefits, health, safety and sports programs for its members. (Russtum G. Pelima/SARANGANI INFORMATION OFFICE)

ALABEL, Sarangani (February 18, 2011) – Care workers received 10 horses on Wednesday (February 16) from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to ease their access of holding Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) classes to Indigenous Peoples’ children in the uplands of Sarangani. The provincial government hired them to serve home based early education program of ECCD Supervised Neighborhood Play (SNP) catering 3- to 4 year-old children in its remotest communities where there are no early childhood learning centers available. Assistant provincial social welfare and development officer Raquel Panal said Sarangani has “low participation rate” in early learning schools due to absence of day care centers in its hinterlands and “home based teaching approach of ECCD SNP is initiated to address this.” “A total of 1,659 children is being catered by the 110 ECCD sites. Most of these sites are reached by roughly a half-day’s walk,” Panal lamented. She pointed out “the need to capacitate the workers by providing horses for their daily means of mobility in catering to two to three sites each worker manages to handle every week.” Federico Yadao of the Provincial Health Office said this initiative of ECCD in Sarangani is one approach to address the challenge specified in the Millennium Development Goals 2 which is to achieve universal primary education the Philippine government has signed and supported by UNICEF. “The good thing about providing horses to SNP is unique but is seen as doable method to strengthen the campaign of early childhood education in far-flung areas in Sarangani which usually can be reached only by walking,” Yadao said. He said the field team here has undertaken a lot of initiatives for the promotion of various concerns on social and health in which UNICEF is considering for replication to other areas in the Philippines, although there are already a lot of Sarangani development interventions already seen in other provinces. Lito Delizo, 30, used to hike approximately five hours on Sundays to reach sitio Blao in Alabel, his home based site where he would stay the whole week, then head off for home in barangay Domolok on Saturdays. From Blao it would still take him another hour’s hike to the neighboring sitio to take a bath and hold classes to two other ECCD sites he handles. Delizo said he is inspired even more to work upon knowing he is one of those first batchers to be given a horse for transportation. “I will no longer hike five hours,” Delizo said in vernacular and calculated his travel now on horseback would be reduced to two hours. “This is really a big help to us because we couldn’t afford the fare with the minimal honorarium we receive,” he said. For Delizo’s case, the road going to his ECCD site can be accessed by vehicles, but impassable during rainy days. The release of the horses was supported by a memorandum of agreement and a deed of donation and acceptance signed among provincial and local officials, the PSWDO and UNICEF representatives to ensure “necessary care and safekeeping” of the horses and subsequently for the monitoring of the progress of the project. The provision of horses is to initially equip at least 10 of the SNP sites but the worker awarded is only entitled of the first offspring as the caretaker while the second and succeeding offspring will be turned over to other SNP workers who experience the same difficulty in reaching their assigned sites. The 10 horses released and the ECCD packages distributed cost P615,000 taken from the P4 million UNICEF funded for the implementation of ECCD in Sarangani this year. Panal noted the importance to support SNP workers as service providers and partners in the implementation of ECCD because they “mold these children’s interest and social ability to be prepared later for the formal education.” ECCD in Sarangani is the second implementation in the country next to Maguindanao but “we have the highest number of home based implementation for ECCD with 110 sites province-wide,” Panal said “ECCD refers to the full range of health, nutrition, early education and social services programs that provide for the basic holistic and multi dimensional needs of the young children that are deeply rooted within the families and communities,” she added. (Beverly Paoyon/SARANGANI INFORMATION OFFICE)