President Arroyo signed Thursday an executive order granting a 10-percent salary increase for government workers effective July.
Mrs. Arroyo made the announcement after attending a wage board meeting in San Fernando, Pampanga. Earlier, the President attended another wage board meeting in Quezon City.
It was March 12, 2008 when this scandal happened. From
It’s official: Poverty worsened from 2003 to 2006, and the Arroyo administration will almost definitely not achieve its poverty reduction target under its medium-term development plan.
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• Poverty worsens between 2003 and 2006
In a press conference Wednesay, government officials disclosed that poverty incidence increased by 2.5%, from 24.4% in 2003 to 26.9% in 2006.
In 2003, 24 out of 100 families in the Philippines were poor; in 2006, 27 out of 100 families were poor.
Those considered poor are Filipino families of five individuals whose monthly incomes were below P6,274 in 2006.
The actual number of poor Filipino families went up by 16%, from 4 million in 2003 to 4.7 million in 2006.
The actual number of poor Filipinos increased from 23.8 million in 2003 to 27.6 million in 2006, or a 3.8 million increase in the number of poor people. National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Director-General Augusto Santos said he informed President Arroyo about this data Tuesday night through a text message. He also sent her a memorandum on the 2006 Official Poverty Statistics Wednesday morning. Asked what was Arroyo’s response, Santos said: “I have not obtained a response from the President.” Given the bleak poverty figures, the government will not likely meet its target to reduce poverty incidence from 28% in 2004 to between 17-19% in 2010.
Abu Dhabi: Residents will soon be able to pay taxi fares through credit cards, Trans AD, the Centre for Regulation of Transport by Hire cars in the capital, announced on Monday.
This is one of the features of the Tracking and Dispatch system which has been implemented in a sample of cars, said Khalid Saleh Al Rashedi, General Manager of Trans AD at a press briefing in Abu Dhabi on Monday.
“Apart from the credit card facility, we are planning to introduce prepaid smart cards which is being studied,” he said.
The Tracking and Dispatch system has been tested on about 70 new taxis in the capital now and it will be fully implemented by the end of June 2008. “We are trying hard to complete the implementation in four phases even before the stipulated time.” It will help the people to avoid waiting for taxis. They can just call up the call centre which can track the taxis available nearby and dispatch them to the passengers.”
The officials said taxis can be booked in advance or planned future trips. The nearest available taxi to the customer’s location will be automatically dispatched using the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite system. The system will inform the customer of the taxi number and the estimated time for arrival through the state-of -the-art Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS).
Taxis are fitted with an advanced mobile data terminal that displays fare details and progress from pick up point to destination on a map. Customers can monitor the progress and make sure that the taxi is taking an appropriate route from pick up point to drop -off point.
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