AAC retrenching
as reopening dims
BY CARLA GOMEZ

Asian Alcohol Corp. in Pulupandan town, Negros Occidental, has sent notices of retrenchment to 110 of its 207 employees because there does not appear to be any more chance that it will resume operations, Susan Benitez, ACC vice president for operations, said yesterday.

When AAC stopped its operations on June 2, it had 330 regular and casual employees. The 123 casual employees immediately lost their jobs then, she said.

In the notices of retrenchment he sent out, Henry Tan, ACC senior vice president and general manager, told the 110 regular employees their services will no longer be required effective Sept. 1.

The cracks in the ground in Brgy. Quintin Remo, Moises Padilla, which are now a few kilometers long, may have been a strange phenomenon to some town residents, but not for the two geologists who visited and conducted a study of the affected sites during the weekend.

“It's a local phenomenon – a landslide – induced by heavy rains,” Dr. Sandra Catame, a geologist and member of the Philippine Institute of Geological Sciences, declared.

Catame also said the cracks in the ground have nothing to do whatsoever with the volcanic activity of Mt. Kanlaon . They may also have been caused by an earthquake, she said.

Bacolod Mayor Evelio Leonardia yesterday said he is happy to inform city residents that the Bacolod City Disaster Coordinating Council has been declared the best in the Visayas and Mindanao among the winners of the 2009 Gawad Kalasag Award.

The Disaster Coordinating Councils of Bacolod City and Barangay Tangub, which were among the top three in the best CDCC highly-urbanized category, and in the urban barangay category, respectively, received the 2009 Gawad Kalasag Award from President Gloria Arroyo at rites held in Malacañang Thursday.

Bacolod City received a trophy plus a check for P40,000 which, Leonardia said, will be plowed back to disaster preparedness-nature endeavors of the city.