TACLOBAN CITY- It was a roller-coaster ride for Eastern Visayas for the year that is about to end.
The Manila office of the Commission on Human Rights took notice on the occurrence of extra-legal killings in Samar province, among the victims were a town mayor (Carlos de la Cruz of Matuguinao town) and a Catholic priest (Father Cecilio Lucero), and directed both the police and the Army to conduct immediate solution to these killings which has made Eastern Visayas one with the highest ELK incidents in the country.
Clashes between the military and the rebel group, the New People’s Army, continue this year with the military officials admitting that the insurgency in the region could only be reduced into an “inconsequential level” and not to totally quell them as directed by President Macapagal-Arroyo by 2010.
The influenza A (H1N1) cases in the region had become so alarming that classes, particularly schools based in Tacloban, were suspended for weeks with the city council of Baybay placing a village under a state of emergency. Close to 900 persons were confirmed either to have been afflicted or suspected to be carriers of the virus.
While the region’s palay production has dropped by four percent from the projected production of about 1.5 million metric tons due to infestations and calamities, the Department of Agriculture in the region insisted that Eastern Visayas remains to be a rice-sufficient region.
It was in this year that Eastern Visayas, Leyte in particular, officially joined the business processing outsourcing industry with the opening of the APAC Customer Services Inc. hiring in the process close to a thousand young people. The management was said to be planning for expansion operations which means additional employment.
The region had its first shopping mall in this year which also provided thousands of workers.
Two government-initiated projects, the CLEEP (Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program) and Project NARS (Nurses Assigned in Rural Service), have also resulted to employment of thousands of people, albeit even for only a limited time.
However, the global economic meltdown has also resulted for hundreds of overseas workers from the region to return without jobs. The government, through the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, had provided them with a new lease on life by extending financial assistance.
Weather disturbances brought about by the fast changing weather condition has resulted to destruction of properties and infrastructures reaching to over billions of pesos and loss of several lives.
However, the issue on climate change has apparently sinked in to the consciousness among local leaders with some of them adopting measures to combat climate change. The provincial government of Eastern Samar, for one, involved about 300 young people as its “ambassadors on climate change”, teaching their respective communities the ill effects of wanton destruction of the environment and how to combat its degradation.
And where before the annual “Earth Hour,” staged every March just passes without public involvement, this year was a different case. Both the public and private sectors joined in staging the meaningful event by putting off their power even only for some minutes, cooling the environment even only for some time.
With less impact but nevertheless worth telling that happened in the region in 2009 include the holding of the Palarong Pambansa after 25 years since the region first hosted the annual sporting event; the inauguration of the P1.0 billion Agas-Agas Bridge in Southern Leyte at 85 meters in height is considered to be the highest concrete bridge in the entire country; the conversion-finally- of three towns into cities(Baybay in Leyte, Catbalogan in Samar and Borongan in Eastern Samar), increasing the number of cities into seven in the region and the discovery and recovery of prohibited drugs cocaine in the waters of Eastern Samar valued close to P700 million.
And as the Filipinos to troop to their polling precincts in 2010, over 3,700 candidates across the region- some new, some old and some “recycle”- filed their certificates of candidacy promising again that they are the right people to answer the problems of their constituents. ( JOEY A. GABIETA)
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