An official of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said Thursday the regions of Eastern Visayas and Northern Mindanao have started providing emergency employment assistance for informal sector workers affected by Typhoon Odette. “The (DOLE) Regional Office Number 8 (Eastern Visayas), they started on December 17 – a day after Typhoon Odette, which struck our country. In Region 10 (Northern Mindanao), they started on December 20,” lawyer Ma. Karina Perida-Travilla, chief of the agency’s Bureau of Workers with Special Concerns (BWSC) said in a Laging Handa briefing. She added that other affected areas will be conducting profiling of affected

The Department of Agriculture (DA) projects a high number of rice farmer beneficiaries during the first year of distribution of aid under the Rice Farmer Financial Assistance (RFFA) program. “Some 1.5 million rice farmers are estimated to get PHP5,000 aid this year,” DA Assistant Secretary Arnel de Mesa said in a public briefing on Thursday. In data presented by the agency, the accumulated excess tariff in 2019 from the Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) reached PHP2.1 billion, while the excess tariff from the Development Bank of the Philippines in 2020 summed up to PHP5.5 billion. This means around PHP7.6

Now that reconnection of the power supply from Leyte has been completed, the Regional Development Council (RDC) in Central Visayas on Thursday said the challenge now is to restore damaged electric poles, lines, and equipment to fully energize Cebu. RDC-7 chair and world-renowned furniture designer Kenneth Cobonpue said the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines announced the complete reconnection of power supply from Tongonan, Leyte which are now transmitted to Cebu power distributors. Cobonpue, who works with the Project Balik Buhay initiatives for post-calamity recovery, cited the “strong reinforcement teams from Meralco, Cagayan Electric Power, and Light Co., and Cotabato

The provincial office of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has assured enough supply of Noche Buena products in major retail stores across the province. Engineer Lynna Joy Cardinal, DTI-Antique information officer, said Thursday there would be no shortage of Noche Buena goods as consumers do their last-minute Christmas shopping. “There are nine major stores in San Jose de Buenavista that have supplies of Noche Buena products, such as pasta and spaghetti sauce,” she said in an interview. DTI inspectors are also monitoring other stores with the help of business counselors of their Negosyo Centers in the province’s 18