By DANNY O. SAGUN
PIA Pangasinan Infocenter

LINGAYEN — Gov. Victor E. Agbayani is against the holding of an experiment for the proposed Loterya ng Bayan here in Pangasinan, his provincial administrator said Wednesday.

Lawyer Virgilio Solis said the governor made clear his position in a talk with him on the matter right after a national newspaper recently carried a story about the proposed lottery which seeks to replace the illegal numbers game jueteng.

”Kailangan ng masusing pag-aaral diyan at hindi basta ipatupad yan” he told a radio interview in reaction to reports that the sangguniang panlalawigan was dead set on approving a resolution endorsing the plan of a private group to conduct the lottery experiment in the province.

Admitting the authority of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes to hold such experiment, he asked the agency however to spare the province from an experimental run of the lottery. ”Sa ibang lugar na lang, huwag dito sa ating probinsya,” he stressed echoing the governor’s position.

Board Member Emmanuel Carancho, who authored the resolution, asked the board to schedule public hearings on the matter, which is expected to draw again sharp reactions from the religious, academe and other sectors as was the case when the plan to put up a casino in Urdaneta City came out some years ago.

Ironically, the man leading a crusade against all forms of gambling particularly jueteng comes from the Lingayen-Dagupan diocese, Archbishop Oscar Cruz, who became a national figure with his unrelenting campaign.

Cruz had sounded off earlier after the Senate hearings his concern about the government’s plan to replace jueteng with a PCSO-sanctioned numbers game. With the emergence of ‘loterya’, his warning appears to have been validated.

The proponent is Numbers Numbers Corporation represented by businessman Rolando Dee of Mangaldan. (DOS/PIA)

THE Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture are keenly monitoring 20 bird sanctuaries throughout the country where migratory birds from other countries are flocking at this time of the year.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, speaking to newsmen in Dagupan City, said this is part of the ongoing bird flu protection program designed by both DOH and DA to protect Filipinos from avian influenza or bird flu which is predicted by the World Health Organization to be the most likely source of a feared pandemic (epidemic across continents) “sooner or later.”

Duque called on barangays near these bird sanctuaries to discourage their residents from shooting these migratory bids. Shooting them, Duque said, would disorient the migratory birds and force them to mix with local birds and fowls, like chicken and ducks, thus increasing the danger of disease transmission.

He warned that if migratory birds carry the bird flu virus, they may pass on the disease which could trigger a full blown epidemic in the country, as its H5NI strain is said to possess capability to transmit itself to humans.

Duque was here last Sunday to inaugurate with House Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr. a newly completed dialysis center at the Region 1 Medical Center here, the first and only one of its kind among government hospitals in the Ilocos.

In a talk to newsmen, Duque admitted that migratory birds from countries like China, Vietnam and Thailand are now flocking to various bird sanctuaries in the Philippines at this time of the year to escape the onset of the cold months in those regions.

Confirming that bird flu is really alarming, Duque said the DOH and the DA have prepared a bird flu protection program to ensure that the dreaded disease does not spread in the country

Phases I and II of the program are being handled by the DA and Phase III and IV by the DOH, Duque said.

At the same time, Duque called on the media to undertake proper management of factual information about the disease so that the people will not be unduly alarmed.

He said the Philippines is still lucky because no bird flu incident has yet been noted in any part of the country.

THE Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Pangasinan looks and acts like it’s open to the idea of a government-sponsored Loterya ng Bayan (LNB).

A certain Rolando Dee, provincial coordinator of the Numbers Numbers Co., Inc., recently wrote the provincial board seeking the passage of a resolution recognizing the company to operate LNB on experimental basis in the entire province of Pangasinan.
Dee, a businessman from the town of Mangaldan, said in his letter that LNB is within the loop of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), a government agency that operates among others the country’s sweepstakes and the Philippine lotto.

Numbers Numbers Co., Inc., with office address at 7G Vernida Bldg, Amorsolo St., Makati City, is headed by Octavio S. Marasigan as president and chief executive officer.
Dee enclosed in his letter a proposed provincial resolution with its corresponding number already written, indicating his company is seeking fast action on his request.

The company proposed to provide alternative livelihood to collectors displaced by the sudden stop of jueteng.

Numbers Numbers Co., Inc., a PCSO-accredited company, is currently operating LNB in Makati City, and has manifested its desire to operate the same in Pangasinan.

The company stressed that LNB is anchored on Republic Act No. 1169, as amended by Batas Pambansa 42, which states that PCSO shall have the authority to hold and conduct charity sweepstakes races, lotteries and other similar activities, in such frequency and manner, as shall be determined and subjects to such rules and regulations by the Board of Directors. (PNA)

ARCHBISHOP Oscar Cruz of the Lingayen-Dagupan archdiocese has rallied all Catholics in Pangasinan to oppose and reject the introduction of the “Loterya ng Bayan” (LNB) which he personally dubbed as a “clone to the illegal jueteng”.

In his pastoral letter read today during eucharistic celebrations in pulpits of all churches and chapels, including Catholic schools in the archdiocese, Cruz chided the Pangasinan provincial government which, he said, now intends to propagate more gambling “to officially cultivate more the culture of gambling among Pangasinenses.”

Cruz, the country’s number one anti-jueteng crusader and chair and founder of the church-based “Krusada ng Bayan Laban sa Jueteng” (Crusade for Jueteng-Free Philippines), promised “to make noise” after learning that the provincial board welcomed a letter from a Makati-based company seeking authority to experiment (LNB) in the entire province of Pangasinan.

Devout Catholics consider this an affront to Archbishop Cruz who was the leading figure in pressuring the government to finally stop jueteng which was prevalent throughout the country for many decades.

The letter of the Numbers Numbers Co. Inc., dated September 26, 2005, through Rolando Dee, provincial coordinator, was referred to three committees in the provincial board which are set to jointly conduct a series of province-wide public hearings on whether or not the body would pass a resolution authorizing the experiment.

It appears that the discussion on LNB is still on the level of the provincial board because Gov. Victor Agbayani personally believes that Pangasinan should not be made as experimental base for another numbers game even if it may have the support of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office. (See related story elsewhere in this issue.)

“This is bad news. Like the Pharisees who planned to trap Jesus, the Loterya ng Bayan just as EZ2 are both traps to the people in the province. They may be legal forms of gambling but their objective is exactly the same as jueteng,” the archbishop’s pastoral letter read.

Cruz branded as a lie the claim of the promoters of LNB that it will provide work for the poor. He stressed that gambling is in fact equated with indolence, degradation and vice and went to ask: “Since when has gambling become work?”

URDANETA CITY – The Court of Appeals recently affirmed the decision of Judge Joven Costales of the Regional Trial Court, Branch 45, here convicting a physical therapist for the killing of his live-in partner, a dermatologist, and sentencing him to death by lethal injection.

Robert P. Brodett was sentenced to death on June 5, 2002 for the killing of Dr. April Duque, a beauty consultant and dermatologist, in their apartment in Urdaneta City on the night of December 28, 2000.

The accused hit the head of the victim with a hammer and stabbed her in the stomach, court records showed.

The body of the lady doctor was found still burning in the early morning in a field outside Urdaneta. Only a small portion of the corpse was unburned.

She was not recognized until after two months when the NBI exhumed her corpse and was identified by her mother thru a ring and a wristwatch recovered from the body by the funeral parlor attendants.

Accused Brodett reported to the NBI that his live-in-partner was missing a few days after the killing to feign ignorance. It was the five-year old son of the accused and the victim however who tagged the accused for the grisly crime as the witnessed personally the incident.

The appellate court gave credence to the testimony of the child, saying: “Youth and immaturity are the badges of truth.”

Pursuant to Supreme Court Administrative Circular No. 20-2005 the Court of Appeals is mandated to conduct a review the decision of the RTC involving death penalty which shall come up for final review by the Supreme Court.

Costales had sentenced to death 26 persons accused of heinous crimes to date. He is dubbed as the “hanging judge of Pangasinan” having imposed the most number of death penalties, not only in the province but probably in the entire Ilocos Region.

Four death sentences were already affirmed by the Supreme Court on his convictions but commuted to life imprisonment by former President Estrada and President Arroyo.

IT’S the word of the boss and nobody should dare question it.

House Speaker Jose de Venecia made his position clear to all when he said the ongoing construction of the Dawel-Lucao diversion road will push thru even in the face of a possible legal action being sought by Mayor Benjamin S. Lim against the alleged revision of the original road plan.

Lim earlier threatened to seek judicial relief if the original plan of the project is not followed. The revised plan was for the new road to link with the national highway right at the present Lucao police community precinct, no longer thru the area of the Nelars subdivision which is some 500 meters away as originally planned.

Lim said the revised plan would cost government some P80 million more.

A mall in Lucao owned by former Councilor Belen Fernandez stands to benefit from the revised plan as the road will pass right thru the back portion of the mall. Lim’s Magic mall is a major rival of Fernandez’s chain of malls.

The House leader was apparently miffed by the mayor’s complaint. He was quoted by the local media as saying the mayor is not a spoiled brat to get anything he wants.

Lim’s absence as well as of other city officials at the inauguration last Saturday of a dialysis center at the Region 1 Medical Center reportedly irked the Speaker. Councilor Alex de Venecia, his nephew, who attended the occasion was quick to point out that he was representing the city government.

The fourth district congressman might have been mollified though by the mayor’s presence with him at the investiture rites for officers of the University of Luzon at the People’s Astrodome last Monday. (DOS/PIA)

EMBASSIES of various nations have been asked by the Department of Health to set up a trust fund for the scholarships of poor but deserving students in medical courses to mitigate the effects of the continuing exodus of health care professionals abroad.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said this is his agency’s response to the growing problem spawned by “brain drain” that has already created a serious shortage of doctors, nurses and midwives in various hospitals throughout the country.

Duque was interviewed by newsmen when he and House Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr. inaugurated the newly completed dialysis center for the poor at the government-owned Region 1 Medical Center here last Sunday.

Earlier, Dr. Jesus Canto, director of R1MC, revealed that up to four of the hospital nurses here are leaving for abroad monthly in search of greener pastures.

Duque said he already talked and will talk again to chiefs of foreign missions based in Manila to encourage them to set up a trust fund to finance the scholarship of poor but deserving students to enable them to take up medical courses to replace the health care professionals who have already gone abroad.

These embassies, he said, are those of countries where most Filipino health care professionals are going, like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Saudi Arabia and others.

Duque admitted that the country’s health sector is suffering from a serious shortage of manpower because even doctors are taking up the nursing course nowadays and leaving for countries where there are big demand for nurses.

Noting that it is impossible for poor but deserving students to take up medical course nowadays, Duque said he is arranging with foreign embassies that if their countries will absorb Filipino health care professionals, they should contribute money to a trust fund for the scholarship of those that are left behind. The scholars are to sign contract with the government binding them to serve two years in the Philippines for every year of their scholarship.

The National Integrated Fisheries Technology Research Development Center here said that the latest fishkill in Dagupan City could have been due to over-stocking of fish in pens in anticipation of the big demand during the Christmas season.

NIFTDC Chief Westly Rosario noted that there were too many fish competing for the limited dissolved oxygen in the water, inevitably resulting in the new fishkill as what also happened in Bolinao, another fish producing area of Pangasinan, last week.

The pen owners, seeking to recover investments in so short a time, overstocked their fishpens in anticipation of bigger profits only to pay a high price for their action when the fishkill came, pulling down the price of fish to a low of P30 per kilo last Wednesday.

Rosario observed that most of the fish that had to be quickly harvested from the pens were already of marketable sizes, indicating that the fish farmers withheld releasing their products to the market hoping that prices will still escalate.

He said the overstocking of fish in every pen was also the observation of a Norwegian team, aided by their local counterparts, that are studying the aquaculture industry in Dagupan, Bolinao and various other pilot areas in the country.

The team observed that the rivers of Dagupan are still teeming with fish pens and went on to suggest that the city government should provide for wider navigational lanes between pens, said Rosario.

City Agriculture Officer Emma Molina however took a different view, attributing the fishkill to the sudden downpour Tuesday night that abruptly changed the temperature of the water from mild to cool as she dismissed reports that the pens were over-stocked.

Rosario said the Norwegian team, using sophisticated equipment in their study of the aquaculture industry, is yet to simultaneously release their recommendation to stakeholders and local government units in various pilot area sometime next year.

Rosario said that the degrading quality of the water in the fish producing areas of Dagupan at this time also contributed to the fishkill.

Up to P1.8 million worth of fish was believed to have been wiped out by the newest fishkill that hit Dagupan, according to the City Agriculture Office.

LINGAYEN – Governor Victor E. Agbayani has given the go-signal for the implementation of various measures intended to revitalize the local livestock industry to boost the province’s food security program.

Dr. Benedicto Perez, provincial veterinarian, said the governor has approved the construction of a breeding station inside the expansive provincial nursery in barangay Tebag, Sta. Barbara to serve livestock raisers in central Pangasinan.

Also programmed is the upgrading of breeding stations in Alaminos City, Natividad and Dasol towns.

“We are also setting aside counterpart funds for a stronger disease control program to he implemented in partnership with the Bureau of Animal Industry and the local government units,” Perez said.

He said his office has trained five more persons on artificial insemination and they will be fielded all over the province to assist livestock raisers in improving their stocks, he said.

Dr. Arnold Igos, veterinary I, said the province’s vaccination and deworming activities are ongoing coupled with the distribution of materials intended to further improve the cattle and swine stocks.