DA gives Negros
P162M agri boost
BY CARLA GOMEZ

The Department of Agriculture is giving Negros Occidental P162 million, P19,962,148 million of which will be used to boost its promotion of organic agriculture, Provincial Agriculturist Igmedio Tabianan said yesterday.

The DA is also allocating P90 million for irrigation projects and P50 million for post harvest facilities, he added.

The Bureau of Soils has also allocated P2.6 million to the provincial government for irrigation in Negros Occidental, Tabianan said.

Several huts and old structures near the BREDCO port in Bacolod City, that served as a “lover’s lane“, were dismantled by the management following the fatal shooting of a teenager by a man he tried to stop from molesting his girlfriend in the area on Sunday.

City Police Director, Senior Supt. Ricardo de la Paz, said yesterday that the management of BREDCO decided to dismantle the structures to prevent such incidents in the area, which he said was being used as a “lover’s lane” by couples.

After the killing of Joshua Lopez, 16, of Doña Juliana Subdivision in Brgy. Taculing, Bacolod Sunday, the BREDCO management has strictly implemented the “no entry” policy to the area, De la Paz said.

MAKATI CITY – Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Jessie Robredo yesterday challenged action groups in the sugar industry to “localize” the efforts aimed at fully eradicating child labor.

By localizing or bringing the initiatives to the particular communities where child labor is present, Robredo said efforts of state agencies, non-government organizations, educational institutions, and the private sector, would more easily reach other stakeholders, especially the child workers and their families.

Robredo issued the challenge to more than a hundred representatives of NGO’s, government agencies, the academe, and sugar industry associations at the Asian Institute of Management here.