Former Senator Mar Roxas yesterday met with Negros Occidental officials to help bring their concerns to the attention of President Benigno Aquino and expressed interest in replicating the province’s comprehensive health care program in other areas of the country.

“I’m just here as a Negrense trying to help in whatever way I can to push the programs of the province…and bring them to the attention of the president,” he said.

Roxas refused to say what position he would take on in the Aquino administration.

Senator Tito Sotto III yesterday warned Filipino women employed in China against a West African syndicate that prey on those whose visas are expiring, and asked them not to allow themselves to be used as drug couriers.

Flory May Talaban, 28, of Bacolod City has been meted a life sentence and is now detained at the Ngam Wong Wan Central Women’s Institution in Bangkok, Thailand, for an unspecified crime.

She is a Political Science graduate of the University of St. La Salle, Bacolod. She flew to China in 2005 together with Chona Jomilla to teach at Becton International University in Guangzho, China.

Senator Tito Sotto III yesterday said he is pushing for the registration of pre-paid SIM cards following the bombing of a passenger bus in Makati City Tuesday, which killed five passengers and injured 14 others.   

Sotto, who was in Bacolod City yesterday as guest of honor during the launching of the Barkada Kontra Droga seminar at the University of St. La Salle, said when he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Services in 2000, he called on the government to have all pre-paid SIM cards registered.

He asked the National Telecommunications Commission to come up with a directive asking that pre-paid SIM cards be registered but many opposed it, he said.