Cynthia Villar urges agriculture towns to open farm schools

MANILA, Philippines — Local leaders of agricultural towns all over the country should open schools to help their farmers become more competitive, reelectionist Sen. Cynthia Villar said.

In her recent visit to Carranglan, Nueva Ecija for the 10th Gintong Butil Festival, Villar urged Mayor Mary Abad to encourage farm owners in their locality to convert their farms into learning sites.

“These farm schools will help farmers learn modern ways of farming for free that will enable them to increase productivity and incomes (while) reducing their production cost,” Villar said.

Villar also presented to Abad a book compiling the 1,855 tourist farm schools all over the country, which she reprints yearly as more farm schools are created.

As an accredited learning site of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, Villar said farm owners could earn up to P100,000 a month for training 25 students.

Villar is credited for the growth of farm schools in the country, having authored Republic Act 10816 or the Farm Tourism Law, which encourages small farmers to convert their properties into tourist farms and learning sites for agriculture and tourism courses.

Villar expressed belief that farm tourist schools will be a major contributor in bringing back the glory days of agriculture in the country, given the potential to increase the income of people involved in agriculture and in creating a pool of farmers educated on the modern technologies of farming.

Bam Aquino in Magic 12

Meanwhile, reelectionist Sen. Bam Aquino remained as the only opposition candidate in the Magic 12 of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, one month before the May elections.

Aquino placed 12th in the SWS survey conducted from March 28 to 31, with 29 percent. The survey had 1,371 respondents.

Aquino also ranked eighth in a survey conducted on April 2 to 4 by Magdalo group with 34.5 percent. This was a slight improvement from his ninth-place finish in the Magdalo’s March 5 to 7 survey where he garnered 32.6 percent.

In a statement, Aquino thanked the Filipino people for their continued trust and support, amid the propagation of fake news and black propaganda to destroy his track record.

With the help of his supporters and volunteers, Aquino is confident that his standing in the surveys will further improve in the coming weeks.

If he wins a second term,  Aquino promised to work for the passage of his Trabaho Center Bill that will help ensure job availability for K-12 and college students once they receive their diploma.

Universal health care

In another development, the “preliminaries” in the ongoing drafting of the implementing rules and regulations of the Universal Health Care (UHC) law have been completed, reelectionist Sen. JV Ejercito said yesterday.

Ejercito, who spearheaded the UHC, disclosed that the discussion of four main components of the law have been completed at the technical working group level.

He said the four components include the local health systems, health financing, governance and regulations and service delivery.

“I am happy because things are going well in the drafting of the IRR. As soon as the document is finished and the law is already operational, our people will finally be ‘freed’ from financial stress when seeking primary, curative and palliative services,” he said in a statement.

“I hope we can have the IRR by June, or July at the latest,” he added.

President Duterte last February signed Republic Act 11223, otherwise known as Universal Health Care Act.

The UHC ensures that all Filipinos are guaranteed equitable access to quality and affordable health care goods and services, and protected against financial risk.