Category: Philippines Daily Inquirer

Information and communication technology (ICT) professionals in the public sector are not spared by labor issues hounding most government workers: huge salary gaps, lack of investments in skills training and other resources, and the exodus to the private sector.

The lack of priority in enhancing ICT talent in government is a major factor pulling down the country’s efforts in digitalization.

These efforts would have helped streamline essential services and plug loopholes leading to corruption in the bureaucracy, as industry experts and government officials pointed out during the annual CXO Tech Summit, held in this world-famous resort island on Oct. 14 to 16.

Information and Technology Secretary Henry Aguda cited his own experience losing staff in the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to private companies that offer better pay and promising career opportunities.

New technologies

‘The problem also is the salary standardization [law] (Republic Act No. 11466). We want to provide cover and protection to our IT professionals because they are being poached. In my case, some worked for me for just six months, and they left and went [to] private,’ Aguda told participants in the summit organized by VST ECS Philippines, a local distributor of ICT products and services.

The summit highlighted the need for both public and private enterprises to adopt new technologies in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and other key areas in digital transformation.

Aguda said understaffing among ICT professionals remains a problem as long as there is no law or policy ensuring job security and career growth in government.

‘I know it’s very tempting for them. and we [in government] can’t even counter [the job offers],’ he said.

Social Welfare Assistant Secretary JP Acuña expressed concern over the high turnover of ICT workers even at the Department of Social Welfare and Development, another agency shifting toward digitalization in its services. He also noted that most ICT staff are hired as contract of service workers-a circumstance that remains a challenge for us,’ he said.

‘There are no safeguards for us to retain talent,’ Acuña said.

‘Upskilling’

Teresa Manabat, vice president for computer operations and support group of the Home Development Mutual Fund, or the Pag-Ibig Fund, also noted the high cost of technical training of ICT workers. To remedy this, her department sometimes includes upskilling of IT staff in the proposed contracts during project procurement, she said.

‘What we do is we bundle technical training when we bid [projects]; otherwise, there’s none. It’s really important to continue upskilling IT,’ she said.

Aguda said the department has supporters in Congress who see the need for a Magna Carta for IT workers.

There are three versions of the bill pending at the committee level in the House of Representatives. He hopes the lawmakers will make it a priority measure when Congress resumes session in November.

‘The IT sector should be recognized as a sector that is strategic in government. We have Magna Carta for teachers, for doctors, so we should also have [one] for ICT professionals,’ he said.

‘Industry benchmarks’

All three House bills seek the exemption of ICT workers from the salary standardization law (SSL), as their salaries must be based instead on ‘industry benchmarks, specialized skill requirements, and market conditions.’

The hike in the monthly pay of government workers, except for some institutions, is limited to computations mandated under SSL, which range from P13,000 in Salary Grade 1 to almost half a million pesos in Salary Grade 33.

In his explanatory note, Negros Occidental Rep. Javier Miguel Benitez said the proposed measure he had authored seeks to ensure the government can ‘attract and empower the very professionals who secure our digital sovereignty and advance the public interest in the information age.’

President Marcos signed on Sept. 5 RA 12254, or the E-Governance Act, which requires all agencies, including local government units (LGUs) and government-owned and -controlled corporations, to enhance their respective digitalization efforts in the provision of government services.

The DICT is preparing the law’s implementing rules and regulations, and Aguda said he hopes to ‘do a better job’ in the ongoing public consultations to entice ICT workers to the government.

This includes creating ICT departments and positions for chief information officers in every LGU-a position still lacking in the local governments.

Jobs, foreign investments

Executives from tech companies expressed willingness to work with the government in its shift toward digitalization.

Jimmy Go, president and CEO of VST ECS Philippines, said one measure he has been pushing is the passage of a data sovereignty law, which will help establish more data centers and thus open up more jobs and draw in foreign investments.

‘So the overall change is going to be very positive for the country. More investment, more purchases of computer equipment, and faster latency [in internet speed],’ he told reporters.

‘We need to improve the country’s digital infrastructure, but the government has to be ready also to act on it,’ Go said

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday reaffirmed the government’s commitment to cleaning up the bureaucracy to ensure that every public servant is worthy of public trust.

Speaking at the awarding ceremony for the 2025 Metrobank Foundation Outstanding Filipinos’ Medallion of Excellence, Marcos admitted that the fight will not be easy.

‘We will continue to cleanse the ranks of government to ensure that every official and every public servant is worthy of the trust placed in them by the people,’ he said speaking in Filipino.

‘It will be hard and sometimes it will be painful, but it will be worth it because what we are fighting for is a country that our children will inherit [and] a nation that they can be proud of, that they can be proud to say, ‘I am Filipino’,’ Marcos also said.

During the ceremony at the Heroes Hall in Malacañan Palace, Marcos personally conferred the medallion of excellence to the awardees, composed of four teachers, three soldiers, and three police officers.

They are as follows:

PMSg Ivan A. Velasco

PMAJ Elmira A. Relox

PCOL Frederick E. Obar

UO1 Anro Anthony M. Turallo, PN

Col Ricky L. Canatoy, PA

Col. Joey T. Fontiveros, PA

Mr. Noel V. Sadinas

Mr. Armando Perfecto C. Molin

Ms. Mylene M. Uy

Angelo Mark P. Walag, PhD

In the same speech, Marcos addressed the question of whether the government can still be trusted.

‘And to that, I say: Look at these men and women. In their service, you will find your answer. Because of them, we are reminded that hope is never lost, that integrity lives in our institutions, that honor still defines what it means to be a Filipino,’ he said.

‘Every honest teacher, soldier, and police officer is a victory against the corruption and hypocrisy that plague our country. Join us in inspiring us to strive to correct the wrongdoings of government,’ the President also said.

The event coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Metrobank Foundation Outstanding Filipinos program. /jpv

A 14-wheeler truck loaded with bags of cement plowed through several vehicles before crashing into a house in Camarin, Caloocan City Monday night.

The unattended truck, which was parked on a downhill portion of Camarin Road, suddenly moved forward at around 9:00 p.m. according to the house’s owner Bernaldo Angel, citing his neighbors who witnessed the incident.

It initially hit three unattended tricycles and a scooter before ramming the house, Northern Police District spokesperson Police Lt. Reichel Raymundo told Inquirer in a phone interview on Tuesday.

Raymundo said no fatalities and injuries were reported.

The truck, its hazard lights still on, crushed the concrete wall of Angel’s house.

Angel said he heard a loud sound while he was washing dishes.

‘I heard my neighbors screaming before the the loud sound,’ Angel told the Inquirer in an interview in Filipino.

‘It turns out, they saw the truck was running fast before it crashed into my house, that’s why they were screaming,’ he added.

Raymundo said the owner of the house and the cargo truck reached an amicable settlement.

The driver was already released from custody as of Tuesday, according to the police. /gsg

SB19 – consisting of Pablo, Josh, Stell, Ken and Justin – returned to Japan’s ‘The First Take’ for a live performance of ‘DAM,’ the focus track from their third EP ‘Simula at Wakas.’

The P-pop powerhouse appeared on ‘The First Take’s’ 602nd episode on Monday, Oct. 20, with the quintet entering the studio with excitement for their return before performing the track.

‘They will be performing the song that drew worldwide attention, achieving 4 million views within 24 hours of its MV release – the second-highest record ever for a Filipino artist – and becoming the first Filipino act to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales chart. ‘DAM,” the Japanese music platform said in its description.

‘While rooted in hip-hop, the track weaves in diverse musical elements as well as touches of traditional Filipino music, creating a truly one-of-a-kind sound. This unique piece is performed in a one-take session,’ it added.

The platform also shared photos of Pablo, Josh, Stell, Ken and Justin in a shoot.

‘In episode 602, SB19, the boy group from the Philippines, makes their return after a year,’ the post read.

Making history as the first Filipinos on the series, this marks SB19’s third performance on ‘The Take.’ They previously graced the music platform to sing their hit songs ‘Gento’ and ‘Mapa’ in July 2024.

‘The First Take’ is a Japan-based platform that invites artists from different parts of the globe to sing their songs with a ‘single take,’ this means there are no do-overs or rehashes of their performance. A typical setting usually consists of the artists – usually in casual wear – performing on a plain background with the microphones on display.

Other international artists who graced the music platform were Harry Styles, Stray Kids, IVE, Tate McRae, Laufey, aespa, Seventeen’s Jeonghan x Wonwoo, ITZY, BTS’ V, and Avril Lavigne, to name a few. /ra

Rain is expected in several parts of the country on Tuesday, Oct. 21, due to the easterlies, or warm winds from the Pacific Ocean, the state weather bureau said.

The easterlies are likely to bring rains to Batanes province as well as the regions of Eastern Visayas, Davao, and Caraga, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa).

The rest of Luzon and Visayas are expected to have generally fair weather with isolated or localized thunderstorms, Pagasa weather specialist Obet Badrina said in the agency’s morning weather forecast.

‘The rest of Mindanao will experience partly cloudy to cloudy skies with scattered rain showers and thunderstorms,’ he added.

Cyclone outlook, sea conditions

Apart from Severe Tropical Storm Fengshen (locally named Ramil), Pagasa said it was not monitoring any new low-pressure areas in the country’s area of responsibility.

Ramil was last located 795 kilometers west of Laoag City, Ilocos Norte, packing maximum sustained winds of up to 95 kph and gusts of up to 115 kph while moving westward at 25 kph, Pagasa said.

‘This will no longer affect the country, nor will its trough or associated clouds have any impact,’ Badrina said.

Pagasa added that waters off extreme northern Luzon will experience moderate to rough sea conditions, while the rest of the country’s seaboards will see moderate seas./mcm/abc

Suspected illegal drugs valued at a total of P8.3 million were confiscated in Benguet, the Philippine National Police (PNP) said on Tuesday.

In a statement, the PNP said police seized P6.8-million worth of suspected shabu (crystal meth) in a buy-bust operation in Badiwan, Poblacion in Tuba late last Saturday night.

‘The operation led to the arrest of two suspects – one male and one female, both in their early 40s – after selling a vacuum-sealed pack of a crystalline substance suspected to be shabu weighing approximately one kilogram,’ the police explained. The two suspects were taken into the custody of the Regional Police Drug Enforcement Unit Cordillera, awaiting a case for violation of Republic Act No. 9165.

Meanwhile, the PNP also said its operatives also discovered a 1,500-square meter plantation site in Sitio Saka-angan, Kayapa in Bakun town, containing about 7,500 fully grown marijuana plants valued at P1.5 million.

The plants were uprooted and burned on site upon documentation by police.

The PNP did not mention whether there were any arrests from the discovery of the marijuana plantation.

Playing all-Filipino without its top local, Cignal pulled off the biggest upset in the tournament after stopping PLDT’s longstanding streak on Tuesday night in the PVL Reinforced Conference.

After parting ways with Greek Eva Chantava and missing star hitter Vanie Gandler due to an undisclosed injury, the Super Spikers turned to PVL on Tour MVP Erika Santos and Ishie Lalongisip to sweep the High Speed Hitters, 25-17, 25-22, 25-21.

Santos delivered 17 points all from attacks, including a personal 4-0 run for a 23-20 lead in the third before Tin Tiamzon’s kill and Heather Guino-o’s ace clinched Cignal’s first win in three outings in Pool A.

Lalongisip had 15 points, 11 excellent receptions, and eight digs to snap PLDT’s 15-game winning run dating back to their two consecutive titles in the PVL on Tour and Invitational.

‘It’s really nice to see them step up. I’m sure they’ve missed playing like that for a long time, especially going up against PLDT. I’m super proud and happy for them,’ said Cignal coach Shaq Delos Santos in Filipino.

Setter Gel Cayuna dished out 20 excellent sets that went with six points. Tiamzon chipped in nine points, while Rose Doria-Aquino added eight. Libero Dawn Catindig protected the floor with 18 digs and eight receptions.

PLDT slid to a 2-1 record with Savi Davison and Russian Anastasiia Bavykina leading the charge with 14 and 10 points, respectively.

Cignal seeks to keep its momentum going against winless Nxled on Saturday at Ynares Center Montalban, while PLDT takes on the unbeaten Farm Fresh on the same day.

The Super Spikers are still waiting for new import Katrin Trebichavska’s clearance to play.

Cases of influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) in Quezon province have surged by 149 percent this year compared to the previous year, the Quezon Provincial Health Office (QPHO) said in a statement Tuesday morning.

The QPHO data showed that the province reported a total of 2,887 ILIs from January 1 to October 20 this year, significantly higher than the 1,157 cases recorded during the same period last year.

As many as 1,382 children aged 1 to 10 were the most affected by ILIs, or illnesses such as cough, cold, and flu, followed by infants under one year with 552 recorded cases, data showed.

The elderly, aged 60 and above, registered 166 ILI cases during the period.

No fatalities were recorded this year in Quezon, the QPHO said.

The QPHO appealed to the public: ‘Be cautious – make it a habit to wash your hands, wear a mask, and get vaccinated.’

However, the Department of Health (DOH) assured the public last week that there is currently no outbreak of flu in the country.

Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa explained that the seasonal increase in influenza-like illnesses is not an outbreak, which he said refers to a ‘sudden increase in the number of [influenza cases] in a specific geographic area, such as a community, city, or region.’

The agency attributed the surge in cases to the rainy season, when an increase in ILI is expected./coa/abc

Current and former members of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) board of trustees on Tuesday accused GSIS President and General Manager Jose Arnulfo ‘Wick’ Veloso of misrepresenting the pension fund’s financial performance as most of the investments he oversaw incurred significant losses.

In a statement, members of the board of trustees directly refuted Veloso’s and the GSIS’ ‘illusory growth metrics’ which paint a public narrative that the GSIS supposedly has a strong financial performance under his leadership.

They revealed that the reported asset growth of the GSIS was actually ‘based on misleading metrics and structural inflows,’ rather than genuine investment returns and explained that the increase primarily came from non-cash, unrealized gains from annual revaluation of the agency’s property portfolio and higher mandatory premium collections.

According to the members, this growth is an ‘automatic, structural feature,’ not an outcome of ‘strategic financial management.’

‘In stark and concerning contrast, our review indicates that the new investments introduced and endorsed by President and General Manager Veloso have overwhelmingly underperformed, with most, if not all, currently realizing significant losses,’ the members said.

‘The assertion that the current leadership has been financially accretive to the Fund is, therefore, contrary to the evidence,’ they added.

Furthermore, they accused Veloso of evading a mandatory Board review which was meant to provide a ‘crucial layer of scrutiny, risk assessment, and collective judgment.’

‘It was precisely by evading this mandatory review process that PGM Veloso was able to proceed with the high-risk, underperforming ventures that have now resulted in substantial losses,’ the board members said.

‘This failure of governance is not incidental to the losses; it is the direct cause of the financial damage inflicted upon the Fund and its members,’ they added.

Due to this, the board members called for a comprehensive review of Veloso’s underperforming investments and to hold those involved in the process by which they were allowed accountable.

‘Only through an honest assessment of the facts can we truly safeguard the future of the Fund and the welfare of its members,’ they said.

The statement was signed by Evelina Escudero, former trustees Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez, Emmanuel Samson and Rita Riddle, as well as former board members Alan Luga and Jocelyn Cabreza.

It comes just days after they called for the resignation of Veloso, claiming that his strategies had resulted in losses of P8.8 billion. /gsg

When I did my column last week (see ‘Gen Z fever,’ 10/14/25) about the increasingly political Gen Z (people born, more or less, between 1997 and 2012), little did I realize that I would need to do a sequel so soon, as in today.

Gen Z seems to be a lot on the minds of earlier generations, in the form of anxieties that clash with older people’s aspirations for Gen Z and, increasingly, the next generation after Gen Z, labeled the Generation Alpha. These anxieties go back to the stereotypes of Gen Z that I described last week, of apolitical, if not apathetic and unfeeling, young people.

Yet, I did describe the surge of youthful activism and social movements in Asia and Africa, quite militant at that. The Gen Z activism has been powerful enough to topple governments in Nepal and, just last week, Madagascar, while sending tremors in other countries, including the Philippines.

But there is a paradox here, because Gen Z’s discontent has also been taking another form, first described in English as ‘planking,’ meant more as a prank, with young people lying on the street doing nothing. More recently, it has become popular in China using the term tang ping.

But, unlike the Western planking, tang ping speaks of Gen Z’s alienation from society, a sense that life is not worth all the hard work, including having children and raising a family. Social media is full of posts from young Chinese practically throwing in the towel, expressing exasperation from having to work so hard and, it would seem, for so little.

Underlying tang ping is frustration and a clear ‘rebellion’ of sorts against consumerism, almost disgust with the push to buy. After all, this is the China that gave rise to Shopee and Lazada (Lazada is actually Singaporean, but the market is hugely Chinese).

What’s so intriguing, too, is that the Chinese government has noted the new mood and is worried, warning young Chinese not to become ‘defeatist’ and to be overcome by pessimism. The officials’ concern is very real: if young people move away from consumerism, the Chinese economy is going to slow down.

Young people’s reluctance to start families also spells problems for the economy. The Chinese word for ‘population’ is ren kou, which literally means ‘people’s mouths,’ i.e., the population of a place is given literally as the number of mouths. Up to the 1960s, the Chinese government worried about feeding all those mouths and imposed a draconian ‘one-child-per-family’ limit and then realized population growth had slowed down too much. The government then relaxed the rules and spoke of two children per family, and just last month, it called for three children per family.

At one time, the pressure was extremely strong to have many children, a cultural imperative to carry on the family line, but despite all the incentives being offered to reproduce, Gen Z and their successors aren’t taking the bait. It’s simply become too expensive and intimidating to have children.

I’ve thought about where we’re headed in the Philippines. In at least three recent international meetings of educators, I’ve had colleagues asking me about our demographic (population) trends. I hear educators worrying about China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, with low birth rates, which means they don’t have enough students for their universities.

I tell them we still have a fairly high birth rate, but that’s dropping, too. Ten years ago, it was rare to find young students saying they wanted to limit their children to two, one, or none at all. They fret about the expenses of raising children, but here’s another catch-they worry about bringing children into a world in such bad shape: the climate crisis, natural disasters, and the people disasters of graft and corruption, and of widespread violence.

A few months ago, while waiting my turn at a government agency, a middle-aged man approached me and said he recognized me from his son’s graduation from the University of the Philippines a few years ago, during my term as chancellor, and he said he was worried because the son didn’t seem interested in getting married or working overseas.

I gently explained that young people have different aspirations now, and my parents were too worried about my ‘lack of ambition’ after I graduated from college in 1977. Let them be, I advised him. But I could understand where this father was coming from, having worked overseas, hoping to put his children through college so they would seek greener pastures abroad, not necessarily leaving for the long term.

If I had run into him around this time, I would have told him he was lucky his son wasn’t leaving the Philippines and that I’d worry about him running into racism overseas, especially in the United States. I worry about my own children saying they want to study overseas, knowing what they may have to face in terms of discrimination.

What, indeed, are we passing on to our children and their children?