Oriental Mindoro Philippines
LOCAL
OUTRAGED BY OUTAGE
Power consumers slam distributor over daily brownouts;
ORMECO defends prov’l governor ascomplaints pour in
Oriental Mindoro Electric Cooperative Incorporated denied all the accusations pointed to the Provincial Governor Humerlito ‘Bonz’ Dolor as power consumers expressed their outrage on social media over the daily brownouts and unscheduled power outages in the province.
LESTER NEIL
RUSTIA
Published 4:00 PM,
May 31,2021
Photo courtesy of ORMECO, INC.
Oriental Mindoro power consumers expressed their outrage on social media over the daily “brownouts” and unscheduled power outages happening recently in the province which caused worries and difficulties to a big number of clients of Oriental Mindoro Electric Cooperative (ORMECO).
Facebooks posts including sentiments and memes circulated the social networking site which slammed the abovementioned distributor for the unstable power supply which affected lots of homes and institutions—an issue which consequently put the blame to the provincial government.
ORMECO, as a response, denied all public accusations on the provincial governor in reaction to the raging public. According to their latest press, the distributor said that the ‘Governor of the Province is not guilty of all the brownouts’ and further claimed that they will take full responsibility.
Power outages were reported throughout the whole province ranging from few minutes to even 4-6 hours.
One consumer posted: Magsara na lang kayo tanggap na namin na walang kuryente kesa araw araw aasa kami na walang brownout.
“Kung papatayin nyo ang power wag naman yung wala pa 1 minuto magkakaroon ulit! Masisira ang gamit naming. Serbisyo wag perwisyo!, said another.
The cooperative said that they cannot tell when will a brownout start or end except for the reasons that are deliberately set or scheduled and pointed out that there are "circumstances that are beyond their control."
ORMECO also explained that DMCI Power Corporation is the biggest plant to date that can supply 15 megawatts and has the ability of "blackout start capacity" because its contract is a regulatory plant which means that only DCMI is able to revive its plant quickly and gradually catch all the pending demands in the system.
However, netizens brought the issue into national media thus representatives of ORMECO were summoned and interviewed in Raffy Tulfo's Wanted Sa Radyo.
When asked why the provincial governor is not acting on this issue, Project Supervisor and Acting Manager Atty. Norberto Mendoza refuted the allegations and said that the governor is not to blame on the daily brownouts.
The Management expressed their gratitude towards the support of the governor in their cooperative and emphasized that there is no intentional happening or any political agenda regarding these brownouts.
ORMECO also sympathized with the general public and gave assurance that they are doing their best to prevent these power outages while ensuring the safety of their workers.
To comprehend and understand the reasons behind the removal of Philippine History in academic curriculum, High School Philippine History Movement condemned the Order 20, 2014 by the Department of Education as the movement continue to believe that it was a policy mistake, May 22.
LESTER NEIL
RUSTIA
Published 4:00 PM,
May 31,2021
Photo courtesy of GMA News TV
Jamaico Ignacio, the President of the movement, said in a statement that they respectfully but strongly disagree with DepEd on this specific regard.
Ignacio took his bachelor’s degree in history from De La Salle University in 2012 and later on went to Santo Tomas University to get his master’s degree in history.
The DepEd Order 20, 2014, which was signed by former Secretary of Education Armin Luistro, effectively removed Philippine history from the secondary level, the first time for more than seventy years.
HSPHM stand with their belief that the seven-year-old DepEd order is still a policy mistake and since then caused negative implications on the knowledge of Filipino students in history.
However, current Secretary of Education Leonor Briones expressed her support for the status quo of the Araling Panlipunan curriculum.
In an interview with Philippine Daily Inquirer, the secretary expressed that Philippine history is already integrated with other Araling Panlipunan subjects in high school.
His statement was in contradiction with the HSPHM observation that integration is not enough as it is logically impossible to integrate Philippine history in other AP subjects due to time constraint and other external factors.
Ignacio, together with Vice President for Professional Affairs Emmanuel Caliwan and Government Engagement Director Joey Dela Cruz, elaborated their proposal to return the Philippine history as a dedicated subject in high school Araling Panlipunan curriculum that will promote critical thinking and historical knowledge.
The independent movement’s proposal and advocacy talk was conducted virtually in the presence of almost 300 journalists who attended the online press conference spreaheaded by the Best Designed Campus Papers of the Philippines (BDCP) as part of the first-ever National Press Campus Olympiad.
LOCAL
Premiere tourist destination Puerto Galera has been dealt a heavy blow as local and foreign tourists were not allowed to visit and travel due to the quarantine restrictions imposed by the municipal government since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic started in March last year.
LESTER NEIL
RUSTIA
Published 4:00 PM,
May 31,2021
The community quarantine has disrupted the local economy of Oriental Mindoro’s beach town as it relies primarily on local tourism.
With estimated 80,000 tourist arrival last 2019, Puerto Galera has yet to see any sign of economic activity, a situation which local government and business owners have predicted to last long without the presence of foreign and local tourists.
According to the Provincial Daily Case Bulletin, eight active COVID-19 cases were reported in Puerto Galera for the last three days, three times lower than the average daily cases reported by other municipality in the province.
Puerto Galera, as the rest of the island province, has been placed under Modified General Community Quarantine last June and citizens are hoping to see the revival of tourism industry as the local government began to ease travel restrictions within the island.
Alvin Hizon, the founding President of The Best-Designed Campus Papers of the Philippines, has made clear to the public that the National Press Campus Olympiad is not an alternative to National Schools Press Conference as controversy continue to rise that NCPO is identical to NSPC and the latter will soon be replaced by NCPO.
Vaccine hesitancy in Oriental Mindoro continue to spread across the whole island province as citizens expressed their fear and mistrust towards COVID-19 vaccine with some even refusing to be vaccinated since the Provincial Health Office started the vaccine rollout.
Alvin Hizon, the founding President of The Best-Designed Campus Papers of the Philippines, has made clear to the public that the National Press Campus Olympiad is not an alternative to National Schools Press Conference as controversy continue to rise that NCPO is identical to NSPC and the latter will soon be replaced by NCPO.
LOCAL
Premiere tourist destination Puerto Galera has been dealt a heavy blow as local and foreign tourists were not allowed to visit and travel due to the quarantine restrictions imposed by the municipal government since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic started in March last year.
LESTER NEIL
RUSTIA
Published 4:00 PM,
May 31,2021
According to the latest voters’ tally of Commission on Elections, MIMAROPA (Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, and Palawan) ranked third among the Philippine regions with the least voter registration count as it recorded only 96,180 number of applications in the first quarter of 2021.
The number of applications accepted from MIMAROPA region are statistically low compared to the national average of 120,00 applications but relatively not the least as Region 2 (Cagayan Valley) registration count currently stand at 94,462 and CARAGA with only 87,892 applications making it the region with the least registration count in the whole country.
Last 2019 National and Local Elections, MIMAROPA region has recorded a total of 1,831,328 registered voters with a flatly negative voters’ turnout of 76.91 %.
COMELEC Director James Jimenez reminded first-time voters and other unlisted voters to register as soon as possible as there will be no more extension for the deadline of registration by the end of September this year.
Voting experts and political analysts attributed the low registration count to the declining patriotism and lack of social awareness among Filipino youth.
However, the COMELEC together with Vote Pilipinas released the Mobilization Program with hopes of increasing the 68.8 million registered voters by 10 percent.
History has been made as the National Campus Press Olympiad made its historic debut as the first-ever countrywide online journalism tournament that features series of competitions for grade school, high school and college student, on March 21 via online video conferencing app Zoom.
LESTER NEIL
RUSTIA
Published 4:00 PM,
May 31,2021
With the theme: Promoting Community Development Through Multi-Platform Campus Journalism, it seeks to promote and foster the craft of campus journalists through different competitions.
From the same organizers of the Best-Designed Campus Papers of the Philippines, the virtual press olympiad is divided into two parts: the side events on March 21 to May 2 and the main events on May 12-31.
The side events that include 10 creative contests are open to all students while the 15 main events covering the highly-anticipated Interactive Multimedia Publishing, Mobile Newscasting, Real Time Tweeting, 180-second Mobile Documentary, and print and visual media like news writing, photojournalism and editorial writing will be exclusively divided into brackets for grade school, high school, and college participants.
A pre-determined schedule for registration for main events according to region has also been posted on the official NCPO 2021 page.
Celebrity Robi Domingo, veteran journalists Karen Davila and Zen Hernandez, and LGBT icon Mela Habijan encouraged campus journalists to take part in the event.