The call to undocumented, or illegal, workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to take advantage of the extended deadline offered by authorities there to correct and legalize their status was reiterated by Department of Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz, a press release from DOLE said.

Baldoz said in the press release that the government of Saudi Arabia, through the King, has generously extended to November 3 the deadline for illegal migrant workers of all nationalities to correct their status. She urged all Filipinos staying in Saudi Arabia illegally to heed the call.

She warned that relevant Saudi government agencies will start the inspection campaigns and apply the labor and immigration laws on both employers and migrants when the correction period expires.

NIA vows fast-tracking of projects

The National Irrigation Authority is trying to fast track all its projects in Negros Occidental, NIA Region 6 Director Gerardo Corsiga, said yesterday.

Last week, Governor Alfredo Marañon urged NIA personnel to hasten the implementation of the irrigation projects in the province and the signing of memorandums of agreement with local government units.

He said NIA only had a 66-percent accomplishment rate for new areas of irrigation from 2001 to 2009,  and these yearly failures continued through 2012.

PLDT finishes
P1-B ICT plan

Telecommunications giant PLDT has just switched on P1 billion worth of equipment and systems designed to strengthen its core internet protocol or IP backbone that will enable it to handle a significantly larger volume of data, voice and video traffic from this point forward.

Seen to benefit mainly the corporate sector such as banks and financial institutions as well as the business process outsourcing industry, this data network expansion program was also seen to lift the so-called smart phone penetration rate of some 10 percent at the moment to around 30 percent within three to five years.

This was revealed yesterday at a news conference called by PLDT president and chief executive officer Napoleon Nazareno who said the country’s smart phone penetration at the moment is inferior to penetration rates enjoyed by some countries in the region.

back to top