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Saturday, July 16, 2022 Vol. 17 No. 281

P25.00 nationwide | 18 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK

By Cai U. Ordinario

The Philippine setting

BASED on the 2022 report, the Philippines ranked the lowest at 46th overall in educational attainment. This represented a decline of 7 notches from 39th in 2021.

The WEF said this is because gender parity decreased in primary education enrollment, where there is a larger share of boys than girls.

Another subindex was political empowerment at 35th out of 146 countries and 30th overall in terms of health and survival.

In terms of political , there was a two-notch decrease from 33rd place in 2021 and four-notch decline in health and survival compared to last year.

The WEF said the country’s ranking was mainly due to the absence of “significant changes, positive or negative” in these subindices.

In terms of economic participation, where the country ranked its highest this year, the Philippines was 16th overall in 2022.

This was a decline of two notches from 17th in 2021.

“On the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, while the entire labor force was impacted, in 2022 the share of women participating in the workforce was still 24.5 percentage points lower than the share of men. Gender parity for legislative, senior officers and managers, as well as for professional and technical workers, remains

“OUR data is telling us a very clear story: Women face more barriers in the workplace when compared to their male counterparts—they are currently underrepresented in leadership, and are not being promoted into leadership roles at the same rate as men.”—Feon Ang , LinkedIn managing director for Asia-Pacific

constant,” the report stated.

Hiring women

IN a statement issued on Wednesday, LinkedIn noted that more women are being hired in leadership roles since 2015, with the largest increase seen in the Philippines among all Asia-Pacific markets studied.

Based on its latest data, Linked­In stated that only about 1 in 3 or 34 percent of hires into leadership positions in the Philippines in 2015 were women, with that figure jumping to 43 percent in 2022.

Of the countries considered, the second largest increase among Asia-Pacific markets are from Australia; New Zealand also saw an increase to 40 percent in 2022 from 34 percent in 2015.

However, Singapore saw a slightly smaller increase in the hiring of women into leadership roles to 37 percent in 2022 from 32 percent in 2015.

“Out of the 36 major economies considered, the Philippines ranks 4th globally in the representation of women in leadership positions.

LinkedIn data shows that women account for a third of leadership roles (31 percent) worldwide,” LinkedIn said in its statement.

However, women are not getting promoted internally into leadership positions as frequently as men.

In the Philippines, men are 26 percent more likely to be promoted into leadership positions than women. This statistic is more pronounced in other Asia-Pacific countries like Singapore and India (42 percent).

LinkedIn also said the proportion of women decreases as they rise through the career ranks. At a global average, there are only 27 percent of women at the Vice President (VP) level, and 25 percent at the C-Suite

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 56.2420

Amid pandemic, PHL logs lowest rank in this year’s Global Gender Gap Index (CXO) level—two of the highest seniority levels in the workforce.

In the Philippines, there are 40 percent at the VP level and 32 percent at the CXO level, higher than the global average.

Tiebreaker

FURTHER, while there are more female leaders in industries where women are better represented in the workforce, their representation in leadership roles within these industries is not always necessarily higher than men.

In the Philippines, there are more women working in Education at 62 percent and only slightly more female leaders than male leaders at 52 percent. In the Healthcare sector, there are more women at 60 percent, but only 45 percent women are in leadership roles.

“Our data is telling us a very clear story: Women face more barriers in the workplace when compared to their male counter-

parts—they are currently underrepresented in leadership, and are not being promoted into leadership roles at the same rate as men,” Feon Ang, LinkedIn managing director for Asia-Pacific, said.

“We need to do more to ensure that women in the workforce have equal access to opportunities. Organizations and business leaders should look at solutions like internal mobility, fair hiring practices with a focus on skills and flexibility. This will ensure that women are equal contributors at all levels in an organization,” she added.

LinkedIn said its data was based on anonymized and aggregated profile information of Linked­ In’s 830 million members around the world.

As such, it is influenced by how members choose to use the platform, which can vary based on professional, social, and regional culture, as well as overall site availability and accessibility.

n JAPAN 0.4047 n UK 66.5287 n HK 7.1648 n CHINA 8.3222 n SINGAPORE 40.0813 n AUSTRALIA 37.9296 n EU 56.3545 n KOREA 0.0427 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.9827

Source: BSP (July 15, 2022)

SKYPIXEL | DREAMSTIME.COM

The country is now ranked 19th out of 146 countries. This is the lowest since 2006 when the country debuted in the index at 6th out of 115 countries.

Based on previous performance, the Philippines’s highest ranking in the index was in 2013 at 5th out of 136 countries. The country has always been part of the top 10 between 2006 and 2018.

“While the country has improved upon its first gender parity score by 4.2 percentage points, since 2013 progress has hovered between 0.783 and 0.799,” WEF said in its report.

“In 2022 the Philippines recorded a gender gap of 21.7 percent, similar to last year. As a result, the Philippines dropped two spots in the general ranking, from 17th to 19th, with minor variations across subindexes,” the report stated.

The Global Gender Gap Index is based on countries’ performance in economic participation and opportunity; education attainment; health and survival; and political engagement.

LINKEDIN.COM/IN/FEONANG

HE Philippines recorded its lowest ranking in this year’s Global Gender Gap Index released recently by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

NewsSaturday BusinessMirror

A2 Saturday, July 16, 2022

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Crypto plunge is cautionary tale for public pension funds

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By Steve Karnowski | The Associated Press

INNEAPOLIS—When the Houston Firefighters Relief and Retirement Fund bought $25 million in cryptocurrencies, with the fund’s chief investment officer touting their potential, retired Fire Capt. Russell Harris was concerned.

Harris, 62, has attended the funerals of 34 firefighters killed in the line of duty. He was already worried about his pension after an overhaul by state and city officials cut payments as they grappled with the ability to pay out benefits.

He didn’t see crypto, unproven in his eyes, as an answer.

“I don’t like it,” Harris said.

“There’s too many pyramid schemes that everybody gets wrapped up in.

That’s the way I see this cryptocurrency at this time.... There might be a place for it, but it’s still new and nobody understands it.”

Too risky?

THE plunge in prices for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in recent weeks provides a cautionary tale for the handful of public pension funds that have dipped their toes in the crypto pool over the past few years.

Most have done it indirectly through stocks or investment funds that serve as proxies for the larger crypto market.

A lack of transparency makes it difficult to tell whether they’ve

made or lost money, let alone how much, and for the most part fund officials won’t say.

But the recent crypto meltdown has prompted a larger question: For pension funds that ensure teachers, firefighters, police and other public workers receive guaranteed benefits in retirement after public service, is any amount of crypto investment too risky?

Many public pension funds across the US are underfunded, sometimes seriously so, which leads them to take risks to try to catch up. That doesn’t always work out, and the risk extends not just to the funds, but to taxpayers who might have to bail them out, either through higher taxes or diverting spending away from other needs.

Keith Brainard, research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, said he wasn’t aware of more than a handful of public pension funds that have invested in crypto.

“There may come a day when crypto settles down and becomes adequately understood and mature as a potential investment that pub-

RETIRED Houston Fire Captain Russell Harris walks past a 1967 Chevy Camaro inside his workshop on Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in East Bernard, Texas. AP

lic pension funds might embrace them,” Brainard said. “I’m just not sure that we’re there yet.”

The US Department of Labor urges “extreme care” in crypto investments because of the high risks.

Regulation and oversight

THE recent plunge in crypto prices has caused Washington to more closely scrutinize the freewheeling industry.

After the collapse of the $40-billion crypto asset known as Terra, senators in both parties have proposed legislation that would regulate crypto for the first time, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called for more oversight of crypto ventures.

The Houston Firefighters Relief and Retirement Fund’s cryptocurrency investment wasn’t very big—just $25 million in what was then a $5.5-billion portfolio.

It’s not clear how that panned out in the cryptocurrency market slide this year. Officials from the fund and the union didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

But the fund bought in when bitcoin prices were close to their peak of nearly $67,000, and they’ve been on the decline since then, dipping below $20,000 in June.

The fund’s chairman, Brett Besselman, said in a first-quarter report that it was healthy with an overall rate of return of 33.7 percent in 2021.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said earlier this year that the 2017 overhaul is working well and, thanks to strong returns in 2021, has put his city’s pension funds well ahead of schedule toward eliminating their unfunded liabilities.

Houston’s experiment, which fund managers touted as the first announced direct purchase of digital assets by a US pension plan, followed a series of bigger but indirect investments by two pension funds for Fairfax County of Virginia.

They put over $120 million into funds that seek opportunities in the crypto world, such as blockchain technology, digital tokens and cryptocurrency derivatives.

As in Houston, the Virginia investments are a tiny share of the funds’ $7.2 billion in assets.

Since 2018, the Fairfax County Employees’ Retirement System and Fairfax County Police Officers Retirement System have put money into venture capital funds that invest in blockchain and a hedge

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here may come a day when crypto settles down and becomes adequately understood and mature as a potential investment that public pension funds might embrace them. I’m just not sure that we’re there yet.”—Brainard fund that seeks to harness some of the volatility inherent in the space, said Jeffrey Weiler, executive director of Fairfax County Retirement Systems.

He said the goal was to invest in infrastructure that underlies blockchain technology, which managers continue to view as a high-growth area.

Crypto-related investments aren’t necessarily deliberate. The Minnesota State Board of Investment manages a portfolio worth around $130 billion for several public employee pension plans and other entities.

A recent report shows it held small stakes as of December 31 in the crypto exchange Coinbase Global and the bitcoin miners Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital Holdings with a combined market value of $5.3 million.

It also listed two holdings of fixed-income securities from Coinbase with a market value of $2.2 million.

Mansco Perry, the board’s executive director and chief investment officer, said the board invests heavily in stock indexes, so those holdings were most likely in one of its index funds or were purchased by an outside investment manager.

“We don’t own cryptocurrency, but if a company is big enough to be in an index, more than likely we own it,” Perry said.

The Minnesota board may look at crypto-related investments someday just to learn about them, Perry said, “but it’s not a high priority.... I would say we’re nowhere close to making an investment decision to move forward, but that doesn’t mean we never will.”

The country’s largest public pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, known as CalPERS, took a tiny stake in 2017 in Riot Blockchain that grew to over $1.9 million by late 2020.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings show it reached $5.4 million before CalPERS got out sometime in the second quarter of 2021. Officials de-

clined to give details, but it was a miniscule play in CalPERS’ total portfolio of well over $400 billion.

Win or lose

ACCORDING to SEC filings, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board apparently began testing the waters early last year with purchases of Coinbase, Marathon and Riot Blockchain. Those holdings grew to at least $19.3 million, against a total portfolio of $48.2 billion, by the end of the first quarter this year.

Board officials did not respond to requests for comment.

New Jersey’s main state pension fund appears from SEC filings to have started investing in some crypto-related stocks in the second quarter of 2021. As of the end of March 2022, the state had about $9.5 million in combined holdings in Coinbase, Riot Blockchain and Marathon.

New Jersey state treasury officials said they don’t comment on specific investments.

Other public funds that have taken smaller stakes include the Utah Retirement Systems, which once held a $13.2-million stake in Coinbase but doesn’t anymore. The Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System held as much as $2.6 million worth of Coinbase last summer but was down to $681,000 by the end of the first quarter, after selling most of its stake, while adding about $398,000 worth of Marathon starting in the second half of 2021.

Harris, the retired Houston fire captain, said he sees his pension as a contract that should be honored, given the risks that firefighters routinely take. While he’s generally happy with how his pension fund has performed, he’s still uneasy about crypto.

He also points out that firefighters in Houston and many other US communities generally aren’t eligible for Social Security.

“There’s just a lot of people out there, if they lose that pension it’s over,” Harris said. “Some of these older retirees, I just do not know how they’re surviving.”

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

News BusinessMirror

Saturday, July 16, 2022

Philippines signals key rate hike to fight global spillovers

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hilippine central bank Governor Felipe Medalla said he would not rule out another interest rate increase in August, a day after delivering a surprise 75 basis-point hike to contain inflation at a near fouryear high.

“We still have room to raise depending on the inflation picture,” Medalla said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s David Ingles on Friday, citing spillover effects from other countries for Thursday’s off-cycle decision. “The need for a 50 basis-point move in August is much less now,” he said.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) unexpectedly raised borrowing costs to 3.25 percent, and is now just 75 basis points away from returning rates to 2019 levels.

Soaring inf lation is driving central banks globally to embrace large hikes in a single sitting, with some Federal Reserve officials

hinting that a far aggressive 100 basis-point move is also in play.

“We are acting on the basis of what is already happening and what we expect to happen,” Medalla said, referring to red hot inflation in the US and the Fed’s upcoming rate review.

He said the BSP’s view is the Fed will raise rates by 75 basis points this month.

For the Philippines, that’s a departure from its previously stated position that it need not match the Fed’s moves like-for-like. The peso’s status as one of Asia’s worst performers this year has added to the urgency to use monetary policy tools sooner than later.

The local currency is down more than 9 percent against the dollar this year and adds to inflation in a country that imports goods from fuel to rice.

The peso fell as much as 0.4 percent, trading at 56.33 to a dollar in the spot market as of 10:20 am

in Manila.

Medalla said if the BSP hadn’t done anything, there was a risk of inflation averaging at 4.2 percent in 2023, a level that’s above the central bank’s 2 percent to 4 percent target range.

“The key to us is to increase the chances that we will have below 4 percent inflation next year,” he said.

Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno earlier expressed confidence that the “robust” Philippine economy will “absorb” the surprise 75 basis-point-hike in key interest rates pulled off by the BSP on the same day to rein in the surge in consumer prices.

Diokno, a former BSP governor, said the Philippine economy is still on track to grow within their downscaled target of 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent this year, adding that the revised target “has been set to be able to incorporate the various pace of

monetary policy normalization by the BSP.” “Remember [that] the economy was growing at that rate before the pandemic, when policy rate was at 4 percent. We estimate that the economy will be back to where it was before the pandemic by [the] middle of this year, or by the third quarter of 2022 at the latest. The BSP simply accelerated the normalization process,” Diokno told reporters in a message.

The BSP Monetary Board decided to raise the interest rate on the overnight repurchase facility by 75 basis points to 3.25 percent, effective Thursday, the same day it was announced. Accordingly, the interest rates on the overnight deposit and lending facilities were raised to 2.75 percent and 3.75 percent, respectively.

Previously, the BSP had backto-back 25-basis point hikes in May and June. Bloomberg News with

Bernadette D. Nicolas

36 percent of BCDA earnings to be allotted for AFP modernization, Lorenzana assures

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ases Conversion and Development Aut hor it y (BCDA) Chairman Delfin N. Lorenzana on Friday assured that 36 percent of BCDA’s earnings would be allotted for the modernization program of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

“Ang sabi ko sa kanya [President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ R. Marcos Jr.], ang kagandahan ng aking pagpunta sa BCDA ay sa kadahilanang 36 percent ng earnings o iyong kinikita ng BCDA ay pupunta sa modernization ng equipment ng Armed Forces,” said Lorenzana in a televised interview on Friday.

The former defense chief took his oath of office before the President on July 7 to his new post as BCDA chairman, replacing Gregorio D. Garcia.

The BCDA chairman noted that

his objective is to protect the interest of the AFP on the billions of pesos earnings of BCDA and to ensure that the right amount of budget is channeled for the military’s modernization program.

“So iyon ang aking layunin dito para mapangalagaan natin ang anuman…o ang interes ng ating Armed Forces kontra doon sa mga kinikita ng BCDA kasi bilyung-bilyong piso ito at marami na rin silang naibigay para sa modernization. Nakabili tayo ng maraming equipment dahil doon sa binibigay ng BCDA,” said Lorenzana.

Lorenzana clarified that apart from the Armed Forces, various agencies such as the Supreme Court and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) also benefit from BCDA. “Sa 100 percent na profit ng

BCDA ay, 36 percent lang iyong nakukuha ng AFP so ang karamihan niyan ay ibinibigay nila sa mga iba’t ibang ahensiya para sa mga kanilang gagamitin din, kung saan man nila gagamitin, maaari ring pang-improve ng kanilang opisina or whatever, pambili ng mga equipment.

Pero ang share natin ay 36 percent lang,” said Lorenzana in a televised interview on Friday.

When asked on how potential investments in BCDA will spur economic growth in the country, Lorenzana noted that foreign investments create business opportunities and increase land valuation.

“Tuwing magkaroon ng foreign investment na darating dito, magdadala ng pera at nagagagawa sila ng negosyo ay tumataas din itong valuation ng mga lupa na kanilang binibili ano, iyong paligid,” said

Lorenzana.

In news a statement on Wednesday, BCDA said that in partnership with Filinvest Land Inc. (FLI), they recently wooed Singaporean investors to set up shop in New Clark City, particularly at the 288-hectare mixed-use industrial township project that is being developed within the rising metropolis.

Created under Republic Act 7227, the BCDA is a government owned and controlled corporation which transforms former military bases into centers of economic growth. It remits the largest portion of its disposition income for the AFP Modernization Program.

In a statement on Sunday, BCDA said that its total contributions to the AFP under the previous administration reached a record-high of P25.01 billion. Andrea San Juan

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PCCI lauds latest PBBM Cabinet appointments

By Andrea San Juan

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he Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) has lauded the appointments of energy and environment secretaries, amid the various challenges the country’s facing on power and environment sectors.

PCCI, in a news statement issued on Friday, welcomed the appointments of Raphael “Popo” Lotilla and Ma. Antonia “Toni” Yulo-Loyzaga as chiefs of the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), respectively.

“We welcome and congratulate the newly-named Cabinet secretaries on their well-deserved appointments. We trust that with their competence, vast experiences, and expertise, both will deliver and perform well in serving the people and our country,” said PCCI President George T. Barcelon.

The country’s energy sector is currently facing a looming crisis in fuel and power supply and this has affected the business sector in forecasting energy cost in their operations.

The PCCI chief noted that the country can utilize its abundant resources to compensate for the high energy and commodity imports.

“We have vast mineral resources including minerals such as nickel, gold, copper, iron ore and forest within our shores.

Exploring and making full use of these resources can bring in much needed foreign earnings to cover high energy and essential commodity imports,” said Barcelon as he highlighted the energy and environment departments’ important roles.

Barcelon stressed that the PCCI, through its Energy and Environment Committee, has crafted recommendations for short to medium and long-term plans to help the government address issues in the energy and environment sectors.

“The Chamber has been actively meeting to come up with proposals on how to balance a stable economy and healthy environment as we make full use of our mineral resources,” added Barcelon.

On Monday, PCCI urged the government to expedite the exploration of indigenous resources. Barcelon lamented the lack of aggressiveness in oil and near-field exploration, even as the Malampaya gas field is expected to run dry by 2027.

In a separate statement issued on Monday, the PCCI chief raised the urgency of prospecting and developing the country’s indigenous oil and natural gas resources as domestic supply dwindles and prices at the international market skyrocket.

Citing the experience of the Philippines’ neighboring countries, the PCCI chief noted that they were able to develop domestic fuel resources by drilling more wells. Hence, Barcelon said, the country needs to expedite petroleum exploration.

For his part, Carlos Ramon Aboitiz, chairman of PCCI’s Industry Committee, suggested starting with near-field exploration for natural gas around SC-38 (Malampaya), potentially with a quick win since the platform and pipeline are already in the vicinity.

In relation to the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Frank Carbon, PCCI’s Director for Energy and Power said introducing LNG in the country’s energy and power generation mix will contribute to its diversity and help the country better deal with upheavals in supply and demand and reduce risks of being overly dependent on a single type of fuel like coal.

Meanwhile, Jose Alejandro, Chairman of the Energy and Power Committee, underscored the importance of security of supply and affordability of power, noting that these are engines of growth. Alejandro suggested the creation of a team that will focus mainly on examining price stability to drive competitiveness in the country.

Senator refiles bill disallowing employers from obliging workers to work on rest days

By Butch Fernandez

S

enator Francis Tolentino has refiled a bill asking Congress to pass a law prohibiting employers from forcing workers to work on their rest hours and day off.

Under Tolentino’s Workers Rest Hour bill, employers, manager supervisor or any company official will be banned from ordering employees to report to do work on their day off.

The proposed law also provides company officials—whether managers or supervisor—cannot compel employees to do work during their rest hour.

It further prohibits an employer to order

a worker to travel, attend a seminar, and team building and similar activities during designated rest hour.

The bill, however, stressed that such prohibition does not apply in times of emergency, or when the worker grants consent under an arrangement on overtime according to the law.

Also proposed for inclusion is a provision imposing fine on employer, manager or supervisor amounting to P1,000 for every hour that an employee is compelled to work during rest hours.

Tolentino added he is also pushing for inclusion of a “work-from-home” provision, or “telecommute” that may enable workers to work longer hours.

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News BusinessMirror

Saturday, July 16, 2022

PHL ends stay of foreign peacekeepers in South F

oreign peacekeepers credited with helping ease years of bloody fighting between government forces and Muslim rebels have left the southern Philippines after officials decided to end their presence, but talks are underway to allow their possible return, officials and the rebels said Friday.

Members of the Malaysia-led International Monitoring Team, or IMT, flew out of the southern region of Mindanao on June 30 after their authority to stay as cease-fire monitors, which must be renewed each year, was not extended by the then-outgoing administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.

It remains to be seen whether new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will authorize the return of the peacekeepers. Decadeslong Muslim and communist insurgencies are among major problems he inherited after taking office on June 30 following a landslide victory.

Deployed in 2004, the IMT initially consisted of armed peacekeeping forces from Malaysia, Brunei and Libya to help monitor the enforcement of a cease-fire agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest Muslim rebel group in the south,

which signed a Malaysian-brokered peace deal with the government in 2014.

The European Union, Japan, Norway and Indonesia later sent either armed troops or civilian experts to join the IMT, which also helped monitor humanitarian issues and efforts to rehabilitate war-battered communities.

As fighting subsided considerably through the years, the 60-member IMT was gradually reduced. The last contingent of more than 20 peacekeepers left the south two weeks ago.

In March, a Philippine government peace panel told the head of the foreign peacekeeping force, Maj. Gen. Datuk Hamdan Ismail of Malaysia, that it no longer intends to extend the mandate of the IMT, two officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

With “practically zero skirmishes” between government forces and MILF rebels in recent years, “the exercise of the roles and responsibilities of the IMT has been substantially diminished,” the government panel told Hamdan in a letter, a copy of which was seen by the AP. In the past, deadly clashes wrought extensive damage to entire towns in the south

and displaced tens of thousands of people.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in Manila notified the countries involved in the peacekeeping force in May of the government’s decision “to no longer renew the mandate of the IMT” after June 30 “in view of significant accomplishments in the peace process.” It cited the enforcement of peace agreements, including the establishment of a new Muslim autonomous region, which is now being administered by former Muslim rebel commanders under a transition period.

“All the privileges and immunities granted to members of the IMT, including authority to stay based on currently valid visas and authority to bear firearms shall likewise cease,” the DFA told the countries in separate diplomatic notes, a copy of which was seen by the AP. Philippine officials thanked Malaysia, Brunei, the EU and former member countries in the IMT for their help in restoring peace and fostering economic development in the south, home to the country’s Muslim minority in the largely Roman Catholic nation.

The rebels, however, objected to the government panel’s decision and said that based on signed agreements, IMT forces should stay to safeguard the cease-fire

agreement in the southern Philippines until “the full decommissioning”—a euphemism for the disarming and return to normal life—of all the 40,000 combatants of the MILF, the two officials said.

More than 12,000 Muslim rebels have been “decommissioned” and laid down about 2,000 firearms and other weapons so far. A new group of 14,000 rebels was undergoing the process when Duterte’s term ended on June 30 and Marcos Jr. took office. The rest have not been disarmed.

“The agreement is for the IMT contingent to stay here until the last MILF combatant is decommissioned or until the exit agreement is signed,” rebel peace panel chairman Mohagher Iqbal said, adding that the government and the rebels should jointly decide on the peacekeepers’ presence and their terms of stay.

Philippine officials have expressed openness to inviting the peacekeepers back but the government and the rebels have yet to finalize the details of any such agreement, Iqbal said. He expressed optimism that the issue would be resolved given the success the peace talks have reaped so far.

“The parties must subscribe to the agreements to be able to succeed,” Iqbal said. AP

Angara moves to raise nurses’ pay in all govt health-care institutions

By Butch Fernandez

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awmakers were asked to frontload passage of an awaited law raising pay of nurses in all hospitals and government-run health institutions.

In filing the enabling legislation, Senator Juan Edgardo Angara, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, moved to raise to Salary Grade 19 the minimum or basic salary of nurses, from the current Salary Grade 15, or basic salary from P35,097 to P49,835 once passed into law.

For nurses in health institutions run by local governments units (LGUs), he added it will “depend on its class and the financial capability of the local governments,” in compliance with the law as provided in Republic Act 6758, also known as the Compensation and Position Classification Act. Angara said the remedial law is intended for health-care workers, particularly nurses, who, he added, are known as “the backbone of the health system who play a vital role in timely delivery of the Universal Health

DOH reports persistent climb in Covid-19 cases

By Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco

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he Department of Health (DOH) on Friday said national and most regions in the Philippines continue to show an uptrend in Covid-19 cases, but remain at low-risk case classification with average daily attack rates also still at the same low-risk level.

A report presented by DOH Officerin-Charge Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire presented to the media late Thursday night showed that national case trend continue to rise now averaging more than 1,700 cases per day in the recent week.

Average daily reported cases: July 08-July 14: 1,751 (higher by 40 percent)

July 1-July 7: 1,247 (higher by 47 percent) June 24-June 30: 847 (higher by 50 percent) June 17-June 23: 566 “Most areas show sharp increase in cases with NCR [National Capital Region] showing the steepest increase, now almost at 750 cases per day,” Vergeire’s report stated.

Mindanao, meanwhile, remains on a slow uptrend.

Ve r g e i r e s t a t e d t h a t h e a l t h - c a r e utilization rates are also at low risk in all regions.

“National severe and critical admissions remain less than 1 percent of total hospital admissions with total beds utilization remains at low risk at

Care program of the government.

“They are the modern heroes who face danger and ready to sacrifice,” added Angara, in noting they are directly treating and taking care of victims of the deadly Covid pandemic.

Despite their heroism, the lawmaker lamented the nurses get “too little pay compared to other countries in Southeast Asia.”

He cited studies showing that experienced Filipino nurses’ potential pay could only reached P40,381, which is

23 percent utilization rate,” the report showed.

As compared to the previous week, available beds slightly increased by 476 (2 percent), while admissions also increased by 567 (10 percent) beds.

National ICU utilization remains at low risk at 17 percent utilization rate.

Compared to the previous week, while available ICU beds increased by 165 (6 percent) while admissions also increased by 54 (12 percent).

NCR cases Cases in the NCR remain on an uptrend showing smaller increases in the recent few weeks; seven-day moving average (7DMA) cases in the current week is higher by 29 percent from the previous week.

Average daily reported NCR cases:

lower compared to the lowest paid nurses in Vietnam earning P63,200 a month.

He rued that this is still much lower in comparison with the earnings of Singaporean nurses said to earn P100,000 a month.

According to Angara, raising the salaries of nurses is not just recognizing their sacrifice at work, but also assures that the country will continue to avail of the services of skilled medical professionals ready to render quality health care to the country.

July 08-July 14: 748 (higher by 29 percent) July 01-July 07: 582 (higher by 42 percent) June 24-June 30: 411 (higher by 47 percent) June 17-June 23: 279 Deaths Deaths, on the other hand, is on continued decline from January peak, averaging about one death per day in May 2022.

Positivity rate According to the report, national weekly positivity rate increased to 10.6 percent.

In NCR, the weekly positivity rate is 13.0 percent.

“NCR, CAR, Regions 1, 2, 3, 4-A, 4-B, 6, 7, and 10 with positivity rates greater than or equal to 5 percent,” the report said.

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Privacy body gets ‘unqualified’ audit assessment from COA for CY 2021

By Andrea San Juan

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he National Privacy Commission (NPC) has received an unmodified opinion from the Commission on Audit (COA) for the fair presentation of its financial statements for the calendar year (CY) 2021.

Unmodified opinion is also referred to as unqualified opinion. In a news statement on Thursday, NPC stressed, “The audit was conducted in accordance with the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions and covered the review of accounts and financial operations of the NPC.” On June 23,2022, COA forwarded the Annual Audit Report on its unqualified opinion to the NPC. An unqualified opinion is issued when the auditor concludes that financial statements are prepared in all material respects and in accordance with the applicable financial reporting framework.

“In our opinion, the accompanying financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the National Privacy Commission as of December 31,2021, and its financial performance, cash flows, changes in net asset/equity, and status of budget in relation to the actual amounts utilized/disbursed for the year then ended in accordance with the International Public Sector Accounting Standards [IPSAS],” COA Supervising Auditor Lea T. Petero said in the report.

Privacy Commissioner John Henry D. Naga welcomed the result of the audit and lauded the NPC work force for their commitment and dedication in the proper management of public resources.

Naga highlighted that having received an unqualified opinion from COA signifies NPC’s honest and transparent governance.

“Such is consistent with the Commission’s Quality Policy to perform with utmost integrity and to commit to regulatory requirements of public service,” said Naga.

The Privacy commissioner added, “We, at the NPC, hope that the unqualified opinion from COA will instill public confidence and trust, not only in data privacy but also in the exercise of fiscal prudence in handling public funds.”

Naga gave credit to the NPC work force for ensuring that public funds are efficiently utilized for the benefit of the Filipino people.

For his part, NPC Executive Director Ivin Ronald D.M. Alzona emphasized that NPC’s responsibility goes beyond data privacy, noting that the commission also has an obligation to ensure proper use of public funds.

“The NPC is an enabler and a protector, not only regarding data privacy but also in its solemn obligation to use public funds for public benefit. The NPC gives its assurance that it will continue to improve its fund utilization through consistent review, assessment, and implementation of its quality management systems,” said Alzona.

Apart from COA’s assessment, the NPC also received the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2015 certification in December 2021, for the implementation of a quality management system.

In their statement, NPC said that these are a testament to the integrity of the commission in its endeavor to be a world-class regulatory and enforcement agency.

DTI clamps down on P108K worth of substandard, uncertified products

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he Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), through its Fair Trade Enforcement Bureau (FTEB), clamped down on P108,000 worth of uncertified products during its technical regulation enforcement in Manila on Monday.

Along with this, the DTI-FTEB also verified Suggested Retail Price (SRP) compliance among Basic Necessities and Prime Commodities (BNPC) in its price and supply monitoring.

DTI-Consumer Protection Group (CPG) Undersecretary Ruth B. Castelo and FTEB Officer-in-Charge Director Marimel D. Porciuncula spearheaded the trade department’s monitoring and enforcement teams in visiting two supermarkets and inspecting six firms within Binondo, Manila.

“The intense enforcement has led to the confiscation of 960 uncertified inner tubes worth P53,392 and 1,456 uncertified electrical appliances worth P55,070,” said DTI in a news statement issued on Friday.

Among the electric equipment withdrawn for destruction were electric grills, food processors/mixers, blenders, rice cookers, electric kettles, LED lamps, electrical tapes, and batteries.

Castelo emphasized that FTEB is consistent and steadfast in its enforcement activities. However, she acknowledged the challenge, as sellers of uncertified and substandard products are persistent.

“We do not want to repress the sellers.

But, we want to penalize them for still selling substandard and uncertified products while they are well aware that such is prohibited,” said Castelo.

The undersecretary for Consumer Protection Group noted, “These products should not even be in the market as they impose risks to consumers’ safety.”

The Trade department pointed out that sellers of confiscated items violated Department Administrative Order (DAO) No. 02, Series of 2007, which prescribes the compliance to Philippine Standard Certification Marks Schemes; and DAO No. 01, Series of 2008, which mandates labels of packaging that indicate the consumer products’ nature, quality, quantity, and other relevant information, in the English or Filipino language.

In the first half of the year or from January to June 2022, the FTEB has already confiscated 84,119 pieces of uncertified products worth P21,139,676.89 M e a n w h i l e , t h r o u g h t h e t e a m ’s price monitoring, Castelo affirmed that supermarkets are compliant with the latest SRP bulletin, which was released last May 11,2022.

“Stores are compliant with the DTI SRP bulletin; in fact, most products that we monitored today are being sold in retail at prices that are P1 lower than our SRP,” said Castelo.

Further, she urged supermarkets to offer a variety of goods so that consumers can choose from a wide range of quality and reasonably priced products.

The trade department enjoins consumers to report retailers, distributors, and manufacturers that sell basic necessities above their SRPs or uncertified items, through the Consumer Care Hotline at DTI (1-384) or consumercare@dti.gov.ph . Andrea San Juan

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Saturday, July 16, 2022

TheWorld BusinessMirror

China’s economy shrinks 2.6% during coronavirus shutdowns T

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Japan’s Kishida risks political fight with vow to take up Abe’s legacy

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EIJING—China’s economy contracted in the three months ending in June compared with the previous quarter after Shanghai and other cities were shut down to fight coronavirus outbreaks, but the government said a “stable recovery” is under way after businesses reopened.

T he world ’s second-largest economy shrank by 2.6 percent, compared w it h t he Januar yMarch per iod ’s a lready wea k quarter-on-quarter rate of 1.4 percent, official data showed Friday. Compared with a year earlier, which can hide recent fluctuations, growth slid to a weak 0.4 percent from the earlier quarter’s 4.8 percent.

Anti-virus controls shut down Shanghai, site of the world’s busiest port, and other industrial centers starting in late March, fueling concerns global trade and manufactur ing might be disrupted. Millions of families were confined to their homes,

depressing consumer spending.

Factories and offices were allowed to start reopening in May, but economists say it will be weeks or months before activity is back to normal. Economists and business groups say China’s trading partners will feel the impact of shipping disruptions over the next few months.

“The resurgence of the pandemic was effectively contained,” the statistics bureau said in a statement. “The national economy registered a stable recovery.”

The slowdown hurts China’s trading partners by depressing demand for imported oil, food and consumer goods and hampering

shipments of products to foreign markets.

China’s latest infection numbers are relatively low, but Beijing responded to its biggest outbreak since the 2020 start of the pandemic with a “zero-COVID” policy that aims to isolate every person who tests positive. The ruling party has switched to a “dynamic clearing” policy that quarantines individual buildings or neighborhoods with infections but those restrictions covered areas with millions of people.

The ruling Communist Party is promising tax refunds, free rent and other aid to get companies back on their feet, but most forecasters expect China to fail to hit the ruling party’s 5.5 percent growth target this year.

Other major economies report growth compared with the previous quarter, which makes t heir levels look lower t ha n China. Beijing for decades reported only growth compared with the previous year, which hit short-term f luctuations, but has started to release quarteron-quarter figures.

Forecasters say Beijing is using cautious, targeted stimulus instead of across-the-board spending, a strategy that will ta ke longer to show resu lts.

Chinese leaders worry too much spending might push up politically sensitive housing costs or corporate debt they worry is dangerously high.

Growth for the first half of the year was 2.5% over a year earlier, one of the weakest levels in the past three decades.

Ret a i l s sa les were of f 0.7 percent f rom a yea r ea rl ier in t he f irst ha l f a f ter plu ng ing 11 percent in Apr i l.

Investment in factories, real estate and other fixed assets climbed 6.1 percent, ref lecting the ruling party’s effort to stimulate growth by boosting spending on public works construction and ordering state-owned companies to spend more.

China rebounded quickly from the pandemic in 2020, but activity weakened as the government tightened controls on use of debt by its vast rea l est ate indust r y, wh ic h suppor ts m i l l ions of jobs. Econom ic g row t h sl id due to a slump in constr uct ion a nd housing sa les.

Investors are waiting to see what happens to one of China’s biggest developers, Evergrande Group. It has struggled since last year to avoid defaulting on $310 billion owed to banks and bondholders. AP

Myanmar suspends foreign loan repayments amid dollar crunch

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he Cent ra l Ba n k of Myanmar ordered companies and ind iv idu a l bor rowers to suspend repayment of foreign loans, the latest in a series of steps to defend the nation’s dwindling foreign

exchange reser ves.

In a letter to banks licensed to dea l in foreig n exchange, Deput y Gover nor W i n T h aw directed borrowers to suspend the repayment of interest and pr i nc ipa l of v a r iou s foreig n

Italian Premier Draghi’s offer to resign rebuffed

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OME —It a l i a n P rem ier Mario Draghi offered to step down Thursday after a populist coalition partner refused to vote for a key bill in Parliament, but the nation’s president quickly rebuffed him, leaving one of Western Europe’s main leaders at the helm for now.

The rejection of the tendered resignation left in limbo the future of Draghi’s 17-month-old government, officially known as a national unity coalition, but with its survival sorely tested by increasingly sharp divergences within the coalition.

Draghi’s broad coalition government—which includes parties from the right, the left, the center and the populist 5-Star Movement—was desig ned to help Italy recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Hours earlier Thursday, Draghi and his government won a confidence vote, 172-39, in the Senate despite the refusal by the 5-Star Movement to back the bill, which earmarked 26 billion euros (dollars) to help consumers and industries struggling with soaring energy prices. But the dramatic snub, orchestrated by 5-Star leader Giuseppe Conte, Draghi’s predecessor, did its damage.

Shortly before heading to the Quirinal presidential palace to tender his resignation, Draghi declared: “The majority of national unity that has sustained this government from its cre-

ation doesn’t exist any more.”

But President Serg io Mattarella told Draghi to instead go back to Parliament and see if he can still garner solid support, a Palace statement said.

The next showdown in Parliament is set for July 20, when Draghi will formally pitch for support ahead of a confidence vote—this time not on a specific bill but on his government’s ver y viability.

“Now there are five days to work so that Parliament confirms its confidence in the Draghi government and Italy emerges as rapidly as possible from the dramatic unraveling” of the last hours, tweeted Enrico Letta, the head of the Democratic Party, a Draghi ally and a former premier.

In Br ussels, the European Union’s finance commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, a former Italian premier, said officials there were “following with worried astonishment” the potential unraveling of Draghi’s coalition.

The uncertainty over Draghi’s staying power also appeared to rattle the markets. The Milan stock exchange lost 3.44 percent on Thursday.

If Draghi can’t solidly stitch back together a durable coalition, Mattarella could pull the plug on Parliament, setting the stage for an early election as soon as late September. Currently, Parliament’s term expires in spring 2023. AP

loans obtained either in cash or in kind. The directive requires licensed banks to inform their business customers with foreign debt to adjust loan repayment schedules with overseas lenders.

Companies in Myanmar have at least $1.2 billion in outstanding dollar-denominated loans, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Those borrowers include Ooredoo Myanmar Ltd., a telecom company, City Square Commercial Co., a real estate firm, and telecom tower compa nies Apol lo Towers Mya nma r Ltd. a nd Ir rawaddy Green Towers Ltd. Myanmar’s militar y regime has tightened foreign exchange rules after the nation’s currency lost a third of its value against the dollar last year after the coup triggered a freeze on parts of the foreign reser ves held in the US and suspension of multilateral aid—both key sources of foreign currency supplies.

Most foreign exchange earners are mandated to convert their currencies into kyat at the

central bank ’s reference rate of 1,850 to a dollar set in April, a move designed to shield the local currency from volatility.

The government has banned imports of cars and luxury items as well as tightened fuel and cooking oil imports to preser ve its reser ves. The regime is also allowing the use of yuan and baht for trade along the Chinese and Thai borders.

O n T hu rsd ay, t he cent ra l bank also allowed foreign institutions to establish whollyowned non-bank financial institutions or enter into joint ventures, in a bid to boost foreign capital. The government e a r l i e r r e v o k e d e x e mp t io n s given to registered companies with minimum 10 percent foreign ownership from the mandator y foreign exchange conversion rule.

E a rl ier t h i s mont h , ju nt a spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun told repor ters t hat My a n m a r mu st spend about $700 million for domestic and foreig n loan pay ments ever y year. Bloomberg News

hree days after Shinzo Abe’s murder, Japanese Pr ime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed to honor his legacy by taking up a cause that had eluded the late former premier: Revising the country’s pacifist con st it ut ion. M i nutes l ater, Kishida was explaining how hard that might be.

Successive leaders, including Abe, have failed to overcome the legal and political hurdles required to amend the founding document and legitimize the existence of Japan’s military. Any change to the document, which was drafted by the US during its postwar occupation, is likely years away, even though Kishida’s coalition won enough seats Sunday to start the process.

Abe, 67, was fatally shot at close range July 8 while making a campaign speech, an attack that robbed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of its most prominent advocate for changing the constitution. His death renewed attention to other Abe policy priorities, such as maintaining an ultra-easy monetary policy, strengthening national defense and restarting nuclear plants idled after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

That, plus Kishida’s strong election showing, presents him with a three-year window to pursue his own agenda of making capitalism fairer and greener.

It also gives him time, if he so chooses, to gradually ween the country off of some of his predecessor’s “Abenomics” policies.

Chang ing the constitution would likely be more fraught.

W h i le pro p one nt s a r g ue a n amendment would assert Japan’s independence and shore up its security, the idea has long been opposed at home and abroad by those concerned about Japan’s imperial expansion in run-up to and during World War Two. “I’m pessimistic about the chances for constitutional reform,” said Brad Glosserman, deputy director of the Center for Rule-making Strategies at Tama University. “It’s one thing to be able to do that when Abe’s in the wings pushing for that agenda, but he’s gone now and they’ve lost that motivating force.”

Revising the document requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament to approve a proposal that must then pass a national referendum.

Kishida also noted a consensus must first be forged among lawmakers, who have broad disagreements over how exactly to change the document and its pacifist Article 9.

“It’s not just two-thirds approving of the idea of revision— two-thirds must agree to the actual content,” Kishida told reporters after the election.

The premier said he would aim to get a proposal made as soon as possible and encourage debate in the autumn. That effort has been buoyed not only by the outpouring for Abe, but concern over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some 58 percent of respondents told a Yomiuri newspaper poll this week that they had positive expectations for a debate over changing the constitution. Bloomberg News

Oil set to end volatile week below $100/barrel on slowdown concerns

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il is poised to end the week below $100 a barrel for the first time since early April after another volatile period of trading marked by escalating concerns over an economic slowdown.

West Texas Intermediate tumbled below $91 a barrel on Thursday, erasing all of the gains seen in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, before clawing back some of those losses. Futures edged higher on Friday, but the US benchmark is still down around 8 percent for the week.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to touch down in Saudi Arabia on Friday as part of a Middle East tour, just days after a report showed US inflation surged to a four-decade high last month, much of it driven by energy costs. That’s raised the prospect of more aggressive interest-rate hikes.

“Oil is trading very much to the beat of Federal policy and the implications it could have on both demand destruction and the US dollar,” said Stephen Innes, managing partner of SPI Asset

Management. The market is also watching the increase in virus cases in China and the rest of the world, he added.

A stronger dollar and Covid-19 outbreaks in China have added to pressure on oil this week. Shanghai’s flareup appears to be stabilizing, but authorities are still locking down parts of the city and housing compounds as infections rise.

C h i n a ’s e c o n o m y g r e w a t t h e slowest pace since the initial outbreak in Wuhan, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday.

Figures also showed consumption began improving in June after Shanghai emerged from its crippling lockdown and restrictions in several other cities were eased.

Concerns about an economic slowdown have overshadowed a squeeze of the physical oil market, in part due to upended trade flows from Russia.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said the market is “screaming” tightness and that this week’s selloff has been driven by low liquidity and technical factors.

Bloomberg News

Russian missiles kill at least 23 in Ukraine, wound over 100

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INN Y TSI A , U k ra ine— Russian missiles struck a city in central Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others far from the front lines, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine’s president accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians in locations without military value.

Officials said Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian ship in the Black Sea damaged a medical clinic, offices, stores and residential buildings in Vinnytsia, a city 268 kilometers southwest of the capital, Kyiv. Vinnytsia region Gov. Serhiy Borzov said Ukrainian air defenses downed two of the four incoming Russian missiles.

Nationa l Police Chief Ihor

K lymenko said only six bodies had been identified so far, while 39 people were still missing.

T hree children younger than 10 where among the dead. Of the 66 people hospitalized, five remained in critical condition while 34 sustained severe injuries, Ukraine’s State Emergency Ser vice said.

“It was a building of a medical organization. When the first rocket hit it, glass fell from my windows,” said Vinnytsia resident Svitlana Kubas, 74. “And when the second wave came, it was so deafening that my head is still buzzing. It tore out the very outermost door, tore it right through the holes.”

Borzov sa id 36 apar tment

bui ld ings were d amaged and residents have been evacuated.

A long with hitting buildings, the missiles ignited a fire that spread to 50 cars in a parking lot, officials said.

“These are quite high-precision missiles.... They knew where they were hitting,” Borzov told the AP. Russia denied targeting civilians.

“Russia only strikes at militar y targets in U kraine. T he strike on Vinnytsia targeted an officers’ residence, where preparations by Ukrainian armed forces were underway,” Evgeny Varganov, a member of Russia’s permanent UN mission, said in an address to the chamber.

Among the buildings damaged in the strike was the House of Officers, a Soviet-era concert hall.

Margarita Simonyan, head of the state-controlled Russian television network RT, said on her messaging app channel that military officials told her a building in Vinnytsia was targeted because it housed Ukrainian “Nazis.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his call for Russia to be declared a state sponsor of terrorism. The strike happened as government officials from about 40 countries met in The Hague, Netherlands, to discuss coordinating investigations and prosecutions of potential war crimes committed in Ukraine. AP

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Editor: Angel R. Calso • Saturday, July 16, 2022

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106-year-old grandmother Lottie: Only 2 per 100,000 reveals secret to long life Filipinos are centenarians

By Cai U. Ordinario

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BAE SEGUNDINA LAFORTEZA QUINTO (center) celebrates her 106th birthday on July 10, 2022. Segundina has 10 children, 39 grandchildren, and 64 greatgrandchildren. PHOTO COURTESY OF GERALD QUINIT

By Hilda Austria

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ALASIAO, Pangasinan— Surrounded by some of her children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren, Bae (grandma) Segundina Laforteza Quinto celebrated her 106th birthday on Sunday.

While everyone was into the latest fab on diet, exercise, technology, and science, among others, to extend their life span, Segundina attributed her long and happy life to faith in God and prayer.

“Do not forget to pray, pray, pray,” she said in a phone interview on Monday.

Segundina said she has been praying daily including the rosary, angelus, and novena.

This helped her in raising 10 children with his husband Joaquin, who died at 84.

She now has 39 grandchildren and 64 great-grandchildren.

Racquel Quinto Untalan, one of her grandchildren, said their grandmother’s faith has been

a huge encouragement to their family, especially during the pandemic.

“Despite the trials and challenges that have happened in the family, having a Christcentered home always gives the family unity and harmony that we desired,” she said.

She added their grandmother always reminds them to pray and love each other.

Segundina still does stretching as a form of exercise on the terrace of their house in this town.

Segundina said she is also conscious and gives importance to what she eats.

“We have to be aware of our health. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables,” she added.

Gerald Quinit, one of her grandchildren, said they eat products of their farm as their Laki (grandfather) Joaquin was a farmer.

Gerald has followed the footsteps of his grandfather, who is active in agriculture leading a young farmers’ group and managing their family

farm here.

Although Segundina’s memory is slowly fading, she would still narrate to her children and grandchildren her memories of the Japanese invasion.

“She would always tell us the story of how the Japanese soldiers arrived during the harvest season of tomatoes in their field and they would hide.

They sort of have this secret passage [tunnel] where they would hide until the Japanese soldiers were gone,” Gerald said.

Segundina indicated her contentment in life for having reached 106 years.

“I have no more aspirations.

This long life I have, I am already so grateful [to God] for it,” she said.

Segundina has been an awardee of incentives from the local government units, national government agencies, and provincial government of Pangasinan for being a living centenarian. PNA

IFE expectancies in developed and developing countries are increasing, with the United Nations predicting the number of centenarians worldwide will rise to 573,000 this year. In the Philippines, two in every 100,000 Filipinos are centenarians as of 2020, and majority of them are women, according to data released by UK-based care home marketplace Lottie.

This means there were a total of 1,797 centenarians who were born a few years before or during the Roaring 1920s, the age of jazz bands, speakeasies and, at least in the United States, the Prohibition Era. This data was based on Population Dynamics information collated by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).

“The worldwide average life expectancy is 73.4 years old, however some people have the longevity to last well beyond the ‘norm’ and into centenarian [age 100] status,” Lottie said in a statement.

Of the total 1,797 centenarians, the data showed that 87.81 percent or 1,578 were women and only 12.19 percent or 219 were men.

The number of the country’s centenarians has increased by 89.43 percent between 2000 and 2020. In 2000, there were only 190 100-year olds or over in the Philippines and the number breached the 1,000-mark in 2015 when there were a total of 1,037 of these seniors.

In terms of population and compared to countries in Asean, the Philippines has the third highest number of centenarians in the region.

The leader in the region with the most number of 100-year-olds is Vietnam with 23,850 centenarians, followed by Thailand with 8,766 centenarians.

However, in terms of centenarians as percentage of population, the Philippines ranks fifth in the region with only two out of 100,000 Filipinos.

Vietnam again topped the region with 25 centenarians per 100,000 population, followed by Singapore and Thailand with 13 out of 100,000 population, respectively.

Meanwhile, globally, Guadeloupe

CENTENARIAN Felicidad M. Laygo has received her P100,000 cash gift from the city government of Makati. She is the 94th #ProudMakatizenCentenarian of the city since 2012.

leads the way with 75 centenarians per 100,000 people. This island boasts almost 80 percent more centenarians now than it did in 2000, meaning the Caribbean lifestyle of this French overseas territory appears to promote longevity like no other on the planet.

In second place is Barbados. This independent British Commonwealth nation has 71 centenarians per 100,000 of its population, or more than a 78-percent increase since 2000.

Coming in third is a Caribbean neighbor of the top 2, Martinique.

The state whose culture is a fascinating blend of French and West Indian influences, has 63 centenarians for every 100,000 residents, an 83-percent rise in a 20-year period.

In joint fourth are Uruguay and Japan. Both of these countries boast 62 centenarians per 100,000 people.

However, Japan has experienced a larger increase in centenarian density since 2000 (+88 percent), compared to Uruguay (+75 percent).

Lottie also measured the number of centenarians in each region between 2000 and 2020, to determine

whether the percentage of them is rising or declining over this time period. Here’s the link to the full data: https://lottie.org/data-insight/ where-most-UK-centenarians-live/ The figures for male vs. female centenarians were also analyzed to identify any changes over time. These nations were then ranked in order from the highest percentage of centenarians per 100,000 people to the lowest.

In a study conducted under the Philippine APEC Study Center Network of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), University of the Philippines-Cebu College of Social Sciences Associate Professor Ma. Rowena V. Mende said allowing Filipinos to flourish later in life could reduce health expenses of the government and increase productivity.

Mende said senior citizens aged between 60 and 75 who are still able and willing to work “remain a valuable human resource.” This improves their individual agency making them flourish even in their twilight years.

(Full story here: https://businessmirror.com.ph/2022/07/02/sunrise-inthe-sunset-years/)

Building inclusive workplaces for Persons with Disability UN report says Ukraine bears share of blame for nursing home attack

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HE Philippine Business and Disability Network (PBDN) invites interested employers and organizations to join the “Working Beyond Barriers: 1st Annual Conference on Disability Inclusion in the Workplace.” Held on July 20 and 21, 2022 from 1 to 5 p.m. via Zoom Webinar, it is a two and a half-day online gathering of business and industry leaders who collectively work towards building inclusive workplaces for Persons with Disability.

The conference will feature various topics that focus on opportunities and challenges in disability inclusion in the workplace, and policies and practices that promote participation and representation of Persons with Disability. The topics will also allow the audience to gain a more holistic understanding of disability inclusion by featuring the perspectives of key players, such as the person with disability community, businesses and organizations, and the government, and to drive them to realize their key role to achieve inclusion in all types of workplaces.

The conference is presented and organized by PBDN through its event sponsors and partners. PBDN is a country-level platform, for and by businesses, that works towards more inclusive and barrier-free workplaces

for Persons with Disability. It envisions a Philippines where Persons with Disability can actively participate in, and productively contribute to their respective communities. The PBDN serves as the local chapter of the Global Business and Disability Network of the International Labor Organization (ILO GBDN).

The event is co-presented by CBRE, a global leader in commercial real-estate services and investments that is committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) as more than just values but as a competitive advantage; and is made possible with the support of its gold sponsors: Asurion, AXA Philippines, Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines, IBM, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Manulife Philippines, PayPal Philippines and Wells Fargo, our silver sponsors: Bayer, HSBC Philippines, PLDT-Smart, and Teleperformance, and our partners: ILO-GBDN, Project Inclusion Network (PIN), Unilab Foundation, the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA), Women Inter Industry Network (WIN), and the Austrian Embassy Manila.

The Working Beyond Barriers Conference revolves around the theme “Leadership and participation of businesses toward an inclusive, accessible, and sustainable world with Persons with Disability,”

which aims to recognize the crucial role of businesses and organizations to making inclusive employment a reality, while taking into account the business case of working with Persons with Disability where they achieve the following: (1) Companies access an untapped human resource potential; (2) Companies build a positive brand reputation; and (3) Companies set the standard in diversity and inclusion.

The 1st day of the Conference on July 20 focuses on the “Opportunities and challenges in disability inclusion in the workplace.” The theme will be discussed through multi-stakeholder sessions, which include a Person with Disability panel (who represent varied disabilities), a business panel (PayPal, Manulife, Asurion), and government representatives from the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

The keynote speaker for Day 1 discusses the topic “Planning for and Implementing Reasonable Accommodations in the Workplace,’’ which will be led by Susan ScottParker. Susan founded the first business disability network, Business Disability Forum in the UK, and has supported the “business-disabilitynetwork movement” worldwide

for more than 20 years. She is the strategic advisor to the ILO-GBDN and Valuable 500. Susan has extensive experience helping private and public sector employers to deliver the best practice that benefits both the business and persons with disabilities and which makes disability equality possible.

The 2nd day of the Conference on July 21, on the other hand, will focus on “Policies and practices that promote participation and representation of Persons with Disability.” A notable segment is on “Building a pipeline of skilled Person with Disability talent through vocational training of Persons with Disability,” discussed through a panel which includes a Tesda-accredited school, Swiss IT Academy, Virtualahan, and Project Inclusion Network (PIN).

For Day 2, three sets of breakout room sessions will be the core activity revolving around the 3 C’s of PBDN, which refers to its primary focus as a network: (1) Collaborating with NGOs, MSMEs, and Person with Disability-led and/or ran businesses; (2) Connecting to Person with Disability talent and ways to hire inclusively and promote belonging; and (3) Capacitating companies to be more disability-inclusive through accessibility and an enabling work environment and culture.

By Richard Lardner & Beatrice Dupuy The Associated Press

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ASHINGTON—Twoweeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin-backed rebels assaulted a nursing home in the eastern region of Luhansk. Dozens of elderly and disabled patients, many of them bedridden, were trapped inside without water or electricity.

The March 11 assault set off a fire that spread throughout the facility, suffocating people who couldn’t move. A small number of patients and staff escaped and fled into a nearby forest, finally getting assistance after walking for 5 kilometers (3 miles).

In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.

But a new United Nations report has found that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360

miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.

At least 22 of the 71 patients survived the assault, but the exact number of people killed remains unknown, according to the UN. The report by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights doesn’t conclude the Ukrainian soldiers or the Moscowbacked separatist fighters committed a war crime. But it said the battle at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home is emblematic of the human rights office’s concerns over the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas.

The aftermath of the attack on the Stara Krasnyanka home also provides a window into how both Russia and Ukraine move quickly to set the narrative for how events are unfolding on the ground— even when those events may still be shrouded by the fog of war. For Ukraine, maintaining the upper hand in the fight for hearts and minds helps to ensure the continued flow of billions of dollars in Western military and humanitarian aid.

Education BusinessMirror

A8 Saturday, July 16, 2022

DepEd, US introduce program on Futures Thinking for Education

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HE Education Department recently partnered with the United States government to launch a training program on cocreating learning spaces for the future.

The Leaders In Futures of Education (LIFE) course will teach teachers and administrators on ways to collaboratively design and plan for innovative future-learning spaces that will maximize children’s language and literacy. After the course, participants will develop local prototypes of the said spaces.

“We are taking this challenge even beyond this administration,” said former education undersecretary Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan.

“Within the overall framework of [the department’s long-term goal for the Basic Education Development Plan 2030, the one for] enhancing the capabilities of our education leaders and movers remains relevant especially within and beyond crisis and uncertain futures.”

Fifty school leaders and teachers from the

World Vision, Nagdilaab Foundation formalize pact to boost Basilan children’s learning

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ORLD Vision and Basilan-based nongover n ment orga n i z at ion Nagdilaab Foundation Inc. (NFI) recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that will help families and the local government units in the province of Basilan provide better education and protection to children.

“World Vision is fortunate to sign an agreement with an experienced and…childfocused organization, NFI, in ensuring the well-being of children in Basilan,” said World Vision National Director Rommel Fuerte.

“We are also excited to work with everyone here in the province: from the academe, families to government agencies, in giving children the conducive environment to learn and fulfill their dreams someday.”

“NFI is happy to have partnered with World Vision in assisting children in Basilan to have better access to education, and ensuring that their well-being is advocated,” Nagdilaab Foundation Executive Director Miriam Suacito said. “[We believe every Filipino child should be given equal opportunities in society to make their dreams come true, their lives better, and that] no child must be left behind.”

Fuerte and Suacito signed the MOU witnessed by World Vision, Amores Interfaith and Jabu-Jabu the Calling staff members.

The pact, under World Vision’s “Reaching Children in BaSulTa Island Provinces for Child Well-Being” project, will guarantee children and youth have improved access to education, and their families and communities can be prepared in times of disaster or emergencies. BaSulTa stands for the provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, which are all in the southernmost part of the Philippines.

According to Project Coordinator Mark Sefuentes, many of the children in Basilan need assistance: “I’ve noticed…some children…go to school by boat on their own, which is quite risky. Some of [them] are without slippers.”

Aside from the MOU signing activity, the two organizations also provided around 100 children with new school bags that contain supplies such as crayons, a drawing book, hygiene items, a raincoat, a flashlight, and solarpowered radio. Three initial learning centers received printers, inks, and bond paper.

“The children and families were so happy to receive these items, especially the solarpowered radios. One of the communities still has no electricity. The radios will be useful to them as they listen to news and announcements,” Sefuentes shared.

FORMER Undersecretary Nepomuceno Malaluan (clockwise from left), Acting Education Director Yvette Malcioln, Executive Director Suman Timsina, and Project Manager Mitchell Rakusin US EMBASSY

National Capital Region, Calabarzon and Tuguegarao enrolled in the LIFE course.

With its All Children Reading Philippines project, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), aims to improve early-grade reading skills for 100 million children by supporting the Department of Education.

“I hope…this course will help our partners gain necessary tools and insights that will help

[them] come up with innovative ways to design and create…better education for the future,” said USAID Philippines Acting Education Director Yvette Malcioln.

The US government has been a key development champion in the Philippines for more than 60 years by working with individuals, communities and its local counterpart to improve everyday lives.

Globe’s This IsKwela, UP-JFA teach Pinoys to save, invest wisely

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ANY Filipinos struggle with making sound financial decisions, more so when it comes to saving, borrowing, and investing. Providing basic know-how to manage scant resources is a must as they prepare for the future and avoid bad debts.

This need prompted Globe’s This IsKwela Online Community and the University of the Philippines-Junior Finance Association (UPJFA) to hold the two-part financial-literacy webinar: “Pera-Peraan: Unlock Your Future With Finance.”

The online meeting showed participants their potential to achieve financial freedom and break down personal barriers. It also equipped them with important information to start their financial journey.

“This effort is part of Globe’s mission to empower Filipinos through digital enablement,” said Yoly Crisanto, the telco’s chief sustainability and corporate communications officer. “We hope to give our customers both the digital tools and the know-how to make the most out of these platforms. That way, technology becomes even more relevant and transformative.”

Topics during the event included creating a financial plan, risk personality, budget system, and the different financial markets.

UP-JFA interns Zea Ancheta and Xy Adolfo talked about personal finance, while Ange Yaptangco and Yohan Maronilla covered basics of investing.

GInvest Growth Manager Joey Tomas also tackle, among others, various types of investments and ways to take advantage of GInvest.

This GCash feature allows the app’s users to invest in international and local funds for as low as P50.

“Financial planning has become more important than ever,” he said. “We want even ordinary Filipinos to be able to invest and build their future. Through GInvest, they can easily do that for a minimal amount.”

Financial literacy is a crucial component of Globe’s holistic program promoting Internet safety, with a growing number of Filipinos shifting to digital platforms for their financial transactions. “[The webinar was] timely, as we have seen a rise in the use of fintech solutions among Filipinos throughout the pandemic,” Crisanto said. “We need to equip our customers with knowledge on how to transact safely online.”

Financial education is just one of skills that Filipinos of all ages can learn from This IsKwela, described by Globe as a fun online community platform. Members can also discover new learning opportunities; acquire affordable, accessible and safe learning solutions, plus they have the chance to connect with industry experts.

For more discussions on practical learning, users can join the This IsKwela online community at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ thisiskwela.

Editor: Mike Policarpio

Ed-tech firm all set to empower schools shifting to next normal

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ITH educational institutions recalibrating their teaching models with the Department of Education’s (DepEd) initiative to integrate in-person class with blended-learning setups, and as the country moves forward to the next normal in the upcoming academic year, education-technology (ed-tech) platform Quipper is ready to enable educators, students and their parents cope up with this transition.

The Japanese ed-tech company will continue to provide its digitallearning solutions for them to embrace the “HyFlex” model, which combines the “hybrid” modalities of teaching, such as face-to-face classes, online and modular-distance learning, and television/ radio-based instruction with “flexible” options for students to choose the manner they participate in the course, and engage with the material in the mode or platform best suited to them.

“Nowadays, educational institutions need to provide their students with more engaged learning experiences, while ensuring their well-being and meaningful connections,” said Quipper Phils. CEO Yusuke Takagi. “All these elements are critical for a successful learning experience now and in the future.”

Takagi added: “Leveraging [on] the right technology and platform can help educators transition to all types of setups for learning.”

To help bridge the gap from traditional learning to the HyFlex model, the company offers its user-friendly learning-management system (LMS) with extensive content, as it enables educators to implement hybrid-learning setups so students can have holistic and flexible learning experiences.

“When the pandemic started, we made sure that we could help our partner schools…implement and transition to the new remote learning dynamics,” the Quipper CEO noted. “Our e-learning solutions provide teachers with teaching guides, editable presentation slides, and other resources to support their daily lessons. We also [have] downloadable study guides for students as alternatives to textbooks and video lessons.”

Quipper’s LMS platform boasts of features that aid educators in managing multiple classes via the customized dashboard, send and schedule assignments, as well as assess students’ performances. It also has a content-management tool for creating and publishing the teacher’s own materials, including a new Essay app for improving student’s writing tasks.

Students, on the other hand, can access their Quipper accounts through an Internet browser, or via Android or iOS apps anytime, anywhere through their mobile phones, even without an Internet connection. Meanwhile, parents can super-

vise and assist their children’s learning progress by monitoring their activities and deadlines through Quipper’s Parent Portal.

Also, it gives support services covering regular school visits, online help, and platform training for its clients. Monthly usage reports are also delivered to discuss and maximize the platform’s use and pedagogical webinars for educators.

Currently, the ed-tech platform has three solution offerings. Aside from the basic Quipper LMS with Parent Portal and Service Support features, it also offers Quipper School Premium, which lets students access lectures, assessments, and downloadable PDF guides. They can repeat lessons until they are mastered.

Lastly, there is the Quipper Video, which has all these features plus access to Video Lessons. These are 5to 10-minute videos that provide an overview of the topics for learners who want a quicker, summarized version of content.

counts which started on July 13. No fees will be paid by any student for the duration of the class, and materials needed for such as ingredients, uniforms and gear are also provided for by the center.

KCC currently offers free Kore-

an Language classes with a hybrid setup. For more information and updates of KCC’s newest events and projects, visit its official Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts under @KCCPhil, and online at phil. korean-culture.org.

Current content

FOR this school year, Quipper has just added a new content offering with its K-3 Content Package, which includes topics for math, English, science, Filipino, and Araling Panlipunan or social studies for Kinder and Grades 1 to 3.

There are also the senior high school specialized subjects for the accountancy, business and management strand composed of eight subjects such as business math and principles of marketing; as well as ready-made content for Grades 4 to 10 subjects on MEFSA, or math, English, Filipino, science and Araling Panlipunan; and Grades 11 to 12 Core Subjects, which now has an enhanced version aligned with DepEd’s Most Essential Learning Competencies.

First-quarter topics and materials for all the subjects from these content offerings are now available on Quipper Link, or Q-Link, platform for schools with Quipper School Premium subscriptions. This main portal for teachers enables them to assign activities to their classes for the students to access on their devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and easily track their progress online.

More subjects and the rest of the topics for the second to fourth quarters will be released in the coming months, according to the schedule indicated in the curriculum maps per course or subject.

As of June, Quipper has empowered 59,709 Filipino teachers as well as facilitated 645,016 asynchronous and online live classes in more than 500 subscribed schools nationwide.

It has so far assisted 1.7 million Filipino students with an array of content—including 40,624 videos, 670,122 text lessons, 3.7 million exams, 2.2 million assignments, and 207,832 essays. Roderick L. Abad

KCC launches F2F cultural classes

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HE Korean Cultural Center in the Philippines introduces a fresh lineup of its cultural classes for July 20.

KCC introduces its cooking, Korean traditional dance and taekwondo classes that will all be held in its new building. The classes, according to the center, were selected due to popular demand from both its visitors, as well as the interest of the general public.

The cooking class will be taught by Teacher Lily Min, who also handled previous culinary courses. It will be held in KCC’s new Cooking Classroom, and will have 16 students per class.

The curriculum will touch upon various Korean food-cooking skills, as well as the history and social culture of Korea through food. Interested learners can select the menu for eight weeks which they would like to join upon registration.

KCC’s Teacher Kim Hyo Jun, president of Korea Taekwondo Association in the Philippines, will handle the class for the martial art.

It will be held in the center’s new K-Studio, and will teach 30 students in all. There will

be two sessions of classes on Saturdays, as 30 students will have a level test on the first day.

The group will then be divided into two sessions. They will touch upon the deeply rooted discipline and martial art centered in Korean culture. It also includes strengthening of the mind and body, as well as learning the etiquette associated with it.

Finally, the Korean traditional class will be taught by KCC’s Teacher Jo Jang Eun, who previous led traditional dance classes. It will also be held in center’s new K-Studio, and will teach 15 students in total on Saturday. There will be one session a week, and its curriculum will touch upon the history and social culture of Korea through its music and dance, particularly buchaechum or the “fan dance,” which drew influences from traditional Korean folk movements.

All cultural classes will be held from July 20 to September 17. Students will be selected from a first-apply, first-slot basis via forms that will be released on KCC’s official Facebook ac-

Tourism&Entertainment BusinessMirror

Editor: Carla Mortel-Baricaua

Saturday, July 16, 2022 A9

Thinking of an island adventure?

Go to Surigao del Sur’s Britania Islands

During low tide, a rocky limestone pathway emerges from the waters connecting three limestone islets to Boslon Island, where visitors rent jet skis and banana boats.

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A tadpole-shaped island with a fine white sand beach and a few coconut trees which gives shade against the intense summer heat.

A wider perspective of Hagonoy Island with the Naked Island far top right.

A jetski towing a spinera rotating ride passing the beachside of Hiyor-hiyoran Island.

Story& photos by Klesteer Macasero

he provinces of Dinagat, Surigao del Norte, and Surigao del Sur in Caraga Region are one of the few places in the Philippines where you can find an abundance of amazing breathtaking island destinations. But finding a group of small islands or islets in one area is a unique rarity for those who want to hop from one beach to another.

More than a decade ago, what was once considered a hidden paradise in the small sleepy town of San Agustin in Surigao del Sur is now a popular destination in Caraga Region and Mindanao.

With its clear turquoise waters, fine white sand island beaches, and fresh seafood delicacies, a group of islets have captured the senses of those who visit the area and had been captivated by the beauty of Britania Islands and the best part is that for most visitors, the experience is affordable compared to other island hopping tourist destinations.

Over the past few years, the popularity of the group of islands and islets in the coastal barangay of Britania has grown.

With the emergence of resorts and tourism-related services, what was once a hidden island destination known to only locals in the province has transformed into a tourism haven and a must for island getaways with visitors traveling as far as the Davao Provinces, Bukidnon, Cotabato, and Misamis Oriental.

The islands of Britania are

nestled along Lianga Bay facing the Pacific Ocean with around 20 to 25 islands and islets, varying on the tide. Most of these are limestone formations yet some have fine white sand beaches and even lush green vegetations.

Among the island and islets, about four islands are part of the tourism tour island hopping packages and have become popular with tourist visitors namely; Boslon, Hagonoy, Britania, Hiyor-hiyoran, and Naked Island which is actually a sand bar that appears and vanishes with the tides.

Unfortunately, amid its growing popularity, the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 gave the destination its share of hiccups not only affecting the resorts and its workers but also the tourism services such as boat operators, fisherfolks, and seafood vendors. Adding to the injury was the series of typhoons that hit the province between 2020 and 2021 culminating with the brunt of Supertyphoon Odette.

With travel restrictions easing up, visitors and guests are slowly returning and are expecting to

A picturesque aerial view showcasing a part of the Britania Group of Islands and islets with two of the islands that have white sand beaches.

continue to rise way beyond the summer months and gain more numbers towards 2023.

For a frequent visitor like myself, Britania is a paradise worth rediscovering, especially after the pandemic lockdowns. This time I brought not only my camera but a drone to gain a different photographic perspective of the islands, and I wasn’t disappointed with my decision.

With the right amount of sunlight, the shots I took amazingly translated how beautiful the blending colors of the ocean beaming out as you can see how the turquoise waters gradually transition to deep blue colors with the

white sand beach, limestone rock formations, and green from the island vegetation providing the right contrast.

Adding to the dynamics of the visuals were the boats and the human activity in the water giving depth and a story of fun and excitement for its guests.

For those who are curious, visiting Britania is not as expensive as it seems, there are resorts in the area like La Entrada and MacArthurs Place that offers as low as P1,000 to 1,600 a room that can accommodate a family or group of friends. For around eight to 10 people rates are from P2,000 to 3,800 a night.

For those who might want a more exclusive comfortable stay with a more expensive rate such as Alima ARQ Beach Resort and O’s Landing Beach Resort where prices range from P2,600 to a group rate between P6,000.00 to 8,000.

For the four-island tour package, most resorts operate their own big boats and offer P1,500 rates for a group of 10 to 12. Visitors can also have their food cooked at the resorts and then bring them to one of the islands and enjoy a picnic meal along the fine white sands of either Boslon or Hagonoy islands.

Britania in the town of San Agustin can be reached by bus or van services either from Butuan

City (5 hours) or Davao City (7 hours) through the town of San Francisco in Agusan del Sur. The bus driver can be instructed to stop along the barangay road leading to Britania where the visitor can then transfer to a single motorcycle that will take them to Britania’s beach.

I would suggest bringing your own vehicle or renting one for a more immersive experience as there are several more areas near San Agustin that are good places to visit.

As for the experience, no matter if I’ve been to Britania Islands dozens of times, I would certainly keep going back for more.

DOT-Calabarzon endorses farm tourism and food-hopping

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s part of the reboot of the tourism industry in the Calabarzon Region, the Department of Tourism has rolled out its culinary circuits to showcase its notable farm tourism sites and their unique farm-to-table dining experiences.

Composed of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon, the region is among the most visited areas for Metro Manilans because of its proximity and good road network.

According to DOT-Calabarzon Acting Regional Director Marites Castro, the farm tour circuits consist of accredited establishments which tour operators and travelers can customize to showcase the rich culinary and cultural heritage of the five provinces.

She noted that the region currently has 26 accredited farm tourism establishments, which blend the charm of agrarian lifestyle and

a touch of basic modern comfort and recreational facilities for those offering overnight stays.

Many of them are also recognized by the Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) as community farm schools.

There are also scores of farmthemed resorts and restaurants accredited by the government tourism agency.

The DOT launched last December the Green Corridor Initiative circuits which have been validated to be compliant with the government’s health and safety protocols, and these include farm tourism sites.

Castro also noted that farms are safe alternatives to the crowded tourist spots because of their vast open spaces, good fresh air circulation, physical distancing, and freshly cooked dishes.

A m o n g t h e D O T- r e c o m -

SHAMBALA Silang

Sonya’s Garden in Alfonso, Cavite

mended farm tourism establishments in Cavite are Terra Verde Ecofarm in Maragondon; Sonya’s Garden, The Weekend Farmer and Queen’s Strawberry Farm in Alfon-

so; Bounty Harvest Farm, Luntiang Republika Ecofarms, and EMV Flower Farm in Indang, Yoki’s Farm and Paradizoo in Mendez; Nurture Wellness Village in Tagaytay City;

and Asiong’s Caviteno Restaurant and Shambala in Silang.

The Cavite circuit is the latest to be rolled out by the DOT Calabarzon office, which also includes the campus farms of the Far Eastern University in Silang and the Cavite State University in Indang.

In Laguna, Graco Farms & Leisure in Pila, Silent Integrated Farm in Liliw, Farmshare Prime in Ca l au a n, Jasif Integ rated Farms, and Casa San Pablo in San

Pablo City.

Meanwhi le in Batangas, there’s Don Leon Nature Farm in San Juan, Mileah Bee Farm in San Jose, and Lica Farms in Lipa City.

For Rizal: Flor’s Garden and Nature Haven in Antipolo City, FDRJ Camping Sites Rental, and Pili Paninap Farms in Tanay; and for Quezon, there’s Francesca de Banahaw in Sariaya, and Bukid Amara, and Linang ni LK Restaurant in Lucban.

A10 Saturday, July 16, 2022 • Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Havaianas turns digital trade into major sales channel with partner

BY RODERICK L. ABAD | Contributor FLIP-FLOP company Havaianas continues to be a toppreferred brand in the local market as sales continued to grow, especially on the digital marketplace amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking back, however, running an end-to-end fulfillment operation on its own was among the biggest challenges the brand has had to face.

According to Havaianas e-commerce lead Christine Brunermer, what their customers saw in their e-commerce store was inconsistent with what they actually physically held in their warehouse.

This was because they had separate systems—one for the web store and another to manage the warehouse inventory. They also had to lead, teach and manage the people picking and packing orders, a timeconsuming job for the e-commerce team who already had their hands full.

This delayed the delivery to take 15 to 30 days before an order reached its customer. Since nextday delivery was the norm at the time, complaints and requests for order cancellations increased from impatient customers. Such demanded manual intervention of the customer care team.

Gearing up for the National Flip Flop Month in 2021, Brunermer and her team knew it was time to change their approach to online trade and turn it into a major sales channel.

Fortunately, they had enlisted a fulfillment partner by the time the 8.8 flash sale came around.

With their partnership, what the team usually did manually became automated. “Now with Locad, we are able to dispatch orders within 24 hours and deliver super fast shipping to our customers,” she said, pointing out the cost they put in has paid off with high productivity and efficiency rate of their partner.

“From paying for our own real estate, managing

that real estate, hiring people to cover x square meters of that real estate—all of that has been lifted from us and now we are only looking at the cost per unit.” Apart from costs, their partner has saved them valuable time as full integration of its Control Tower to their own system has allowed them to view data that are retrofitted to the metrics they are looking for.

Brunermer and her team were pleased also to see the large and positive impact of outsourced fulfillment on their customers and feedback.

With both end-to-end fulfillment and workforce management off their plate, their operations have now been upskilled and they are more focused now on project management. “[Locad’s] system has a way of purging information and showing exactly what we have so it’s super transparent and credible, and at the same time it’s very custom and very much in tune with what the retailers actually need,” she stressed.

Why captions are suddenly everywhere and how they got there

BY TALI ARBEL | The Associated Press

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EW YORK—People with hearing loss have a new ally in their efforts to navigate the world: Captions that aren’t limited to their television screens and streaming services.

The Covid pandemic disrupted daily life for people everywhere, but many of those with hearing loss took the resulting isolation especially hard.

“When everyone wears a mask they are completely unintelligible to me,” said Pat Olken of Sharon, Massachusetts, whose hearing aids were insufficient.

(A new cochlear implant has helped her a lot.)

So when her grandson’s bar mitzvah was streamed on Zoom early in the pandemic, well before the service offered captions, Olken turned to Otter, an app created to transcribe business meetings. Reading along with the ceremony’s speakers made the app “a tremendous resource,” she said.

People with hearing loss, a group estimated at roughly 40 million US adults, have long adopted technologies to help them make their way in the hearing world, from Victorian-era ear trumpets to modern digital hearing aids and cochlear implants.

But today’s hearing aids can cost upward of $5,000, often aren’t covered by insurance and don’t work for everyone. The devices also don’t snap audible sound into focus the way glasses immediately correct vision. Instead, hearing aids and cochlear implants require the brain to interpret sound in a new way.

“The solutions out there are clearly not a one-sizefits-all model and do not meet the needs of a lot of people based on cost, access, a lot of different things,” said Frank Lin, director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. That’s not just a communication problem; researchers have found correlations between untreated hearing loss and higher risks of dementia.

Cheaper over-the-counter hearing devices are on the way. But for now, only about 20 percent of those who could benefit from hearing aids use one.

Captions, by contrast, are usually a lot easier to access. They’ve long been available on modern

television sets and are cropping up more frequently in videoconferencing apps like Zoom, streaming services like Netflix, social media video on TikTok and YouTube, movie theaters and live arts venues.

In recent years, smartphone apps like Otter; Google’s Live Transcribe; Ava; InnoCaption, for phone calls; and GalaPro, for live theater performances, have emerged. Some are aimed at people with hearing loss and use human reviewers to make sure captions are accurate. Others, like Otter and Live Transcribe, instead rely on what’s called automatic speech recognition, which uses artificial intelligence to learn and capture speech. ASR has issues with accuracy and lags in transcribing the spoken word; built-in biases can also make transcriptions less accurate for the voices of women, people of color and deaf people, said Christian Volger, a professor at Gallaudet University who specializes in accessible technology.

Jargon and slang can also be a stumbling block. But users and experts say that ASR has improved a lot.

While welcome, none of these solutions are perfect. Toni Iacolucci of New York says her book club could be draining even when she was using Otter to transcribe the conversation. The captions weren’t always accurate and didn’t identify individual speakers, which could make it hard to keep up, she said. “It worked a little bit,” said Iacolucci, who lost her hearing nearly two decades ago. After coming home, she would be so tired from trying to follow the conversation that she had to lie down. “It just takes so much energy.” She got a cochlear implant a year ago that has significantly improved her ability to hear, to the point where she can now have one-on-one conversations without captions. They still help in group discussions, she said.

Otter said in a statement that it welcomes feedback from the deaf and hard of hearing community and noted that it now provides a paid software assistant that can join virtual meetings and transcribe them automatically.

Transcription lag can present other problems— among them, a worry that conversation partners might grow impatient with delays. “Sometimes you

say, ‘I’m sorry, I just need to look at my captions in order to hear,’” said Richard Einhorn, a musician and composer in New York. “That doesn’t mean I’m not aware sometimes it’s a hassle for other people.”

Other issues crop up. When Chelle Wyatt of Salt Lake City went to her doctor’s office, the Wi-Fi there wasn’t strong enough for the transcription app to work. “It was gestures and writing things down and making sure I got a written report afterward so I knew what was said,” she said.

Movie theaters provide devices that amplify sound, as well as glasses and individual screens that show captions to go with the movie. But those aren’t always comfortable and sometimes aren’t wellmaintained or just don’t work. Many people with hearing loss want more films to run captions on the big screen, just like you’d have in the comfort of your own home.

A new law that took effect In New York City on May 15 requires movie theaters to offer captions on the screen for up to four showtimes per movie each week, including during the most popular hours to go to the movies—Friday nights and weekends.

Hawaii passed a state law in 2015 that required two screenings a week of each movie with captions on the screen. AMC, the big movie chain, also says it screens some movies with captions at about a third of its US theaters.

Captions are more available now for live performances, too. Several Broadway theaters promote a smartphone app that captions live performances; there are also handheld individual devices that show captions. Theaters also have a few performances with “open captions” everyone can see.

During the pandemic, the shift to online meetings and school meant videoconferencing services became a tool of survival—but captions came only after a big push. Zoom added live transcription to its free service only in October 2021, but the meeting’s host has to enable them. Google Meet was quicker to make captions available to everyone for free in May 2020; Microsoft Teams, a workplace messaging app, did so that June. ■

JONMAR “OHMYV33NUS” VILLALUNA (left) at a recent eSporting event.

PLAY LIKE A PRO: OHMYV33NUS ON BEING AN LGBTQ+ PRO PLAYER IN ESPORTS

ESPORTS has become a significant part of the culture of today’s Filipino youth, with games spanning generations like Counter-Strike and Defense of the Ancient (DotA), and today’s wide variety of locally-popular games like League of Legends (LoL), Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB), and Valorant.

More recently, homegrown athletes started to dominate their respective eSports leagues. Among such athletes is top MLBB player Jonmar “OhMyV33nus” Villaluna. Playing for Blacklist International, OhMyV33nus went against all odds to become one of the most successful Filipino eSports players today.

Like most eSports athletes, OhMyV33nus’s love for the sport started when she was still a kid. Growing up on PC games, with a particular interest in MMORPG and MOBA, OhMyV33nus decided early to become a part of the local eSports community. “Since I was a child, my dream has always been as simple as playing for a team,” OhMyV33nus shared. “Before, I just used to watch a lot of League of Legends international tournaments. Watching their struggles and winning moments motivated me to become who I am today and inspired me long before eSports became popular in the Philippines,” she added.

With her own share of struggles and heartbreaks, OhMyV33nus admits that it has not been an easy journey.

She is a product of a decade of wins and losses—and after winning the MLBB M3 World Championships as the mid-laner of her team, OhMyV33nus is now an international eSports champion. With this success, OhMyV33nus serves as an inspiration for a new generation of Filipino gamers—particularly those who are members of the LGBTQ+ community.

To all aspiring LGBTQ+ eSports players, OhMyV33nus shares this piece of advice, “Becoming a professional eSports athlete requires intense physical and mental preparations, and this sport transcends all those defining factors that we normally see in other sports—height, race, social status, and sexuality is irrelevant in this field. Don’t let anyone look down on you just because of your gender or sexuality.”

To those planning to start their own eSports journey, having the gaming gear of your dreams could be the very first step. Home Credit Philippines (www.homecredit.ph), the country’s leading buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider and the official partner of SIBOL, the Philippines’s national eSports team to the 2022 SEA Games, hopes to inspire more Filipino youth to take this first step towards realizing their eSports dreams.

With affordable monthly installments and a wide range of brands to choose from like Samsung, vivo, realme, OPPO, Huawei and ASUS, Home Credit allows any aspiring eSports player to purchase and equip themselves with the best device for their gaming goals. Home Credit also makes its services more accessible to gaming through top gadget stores like MemoXpress, Cell Zone, TechBox, and Silicon Valley as its retail partners.

Here are the requirements for entering Singapore as a tourist

THEY say Singapore is the new Hong Kong as a favorite vacation destination for Filipinos. So many of my friends and colleagues have been to Singapore in the last four months either for holiday or work.

At presstime, I am in Singapore and I’ve gotten messages from friends and colleagues about the requirements for traveling and visiting said country.

The first thing you need to do, after booking your plane tickets and making hotel reservations, is to

obtain a vaccination certificate from vaxcert.doh.gov.ph.

To get the VaxCert, you need to have been vaccinated twice with a vaccine that has met the necessary criteria for safety and efficacy of the World Health Organization.

You can generate your vaccination certificate after inputting your name, date of birth and dates of vaccination. You’d also be required to upload your proof of vaccination. I uploaded my digital vaccine card. I think screenshots of physical cards are also allowed. A complete set of vaccines is required. There is no need to be boosted but it is highly encouraged.

At least three days before your departure, you need to fill out your Singapore arrival card (www. safetravel.changiairport.com). There is some confusion online about this. It’s at least three days before and not earlier. You can actually fill this out minutes before you depart for Singapore or even while you’re lined up at Singapore immigration. But of course, it’s better to do it three days before your departure.

I had no problems with Philippine or Singapore

immigration. I do know that a lot of people have had problems with Philippine immigration but, so far, I’ve been okay. My daughter, who took a different flight, was questioned thoroughly by immigration but beyond that, the process was okay.

Personally, all we had were printed copies of our vaccination certificates, air tickets, hotel reservations and travel insurance. It’s so easy to buy travel insurance online.

The cost is from P500 to P1,500 for five days, inclusive of Covid coverage. My travel insurance (Pioneer) was provided by my host, the Singapore Tourism Board, but my daughter got hers from Nomad for P500+. She purchased it online at www. safetywing.com. Take note that travel insurance is not a Singapore requirement but a Philippine immigration requirement. Please correct me if I am wrong about this being a requirement of Philippine immigration.

This is what I was told.

So after you arrive in Singapore, you’d need to go through immigration. I just presented my passport

and vaccination certificate. No questions were asked.

The line was quite long but the process was smooth and quick.

Once you’ve cleared immigration, you’re encouraged to download the Trace Together app (www.tracetogether.gov.sg). You need to open this app once you’ve cleared immigration. This is Singapore’s community tracing app. There was a time when you had to use this app to enter all restaurants and other establishments. This is no longer the case but some establishments still require this.

On your way back to the Philippines, you’d need to download the One Health Pass (bit.ly/3IEpHAY). I understand you need to do this before getting through immigration on your flight back.

As for Internet connection, many malls and hotels in Singapore have Wi-Fi. At the airport, you’re allowed to connect for three hours. You can also purchase a Singapore SIM card that gives you 100GB of Internet access for one week for 32SGD. If you’re staying for longer, there is one for 50SGD.

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

• Saturday, July 16, 2022 A11

Russia fines Apple for violating data storage law A MOSCOW court on Tuesday fined Apple 2 million rubles (about $34,000) for refusing to store the personal data of Russian users on servers in Russia, part of government efforts to control online activity.

Zoom Video Communications and Ookla, which runs the Internet tool Speedtest, were both fined 1 million rubles under the same law.

The Russian government has been trying for years to establish greater control over the Internet and social media, an effort that has intensified in recent months as it tries to limit the flow of information about the war in Ukraine. In March, a Russian court banned Facebook and Instagram for what it said were “extremist activities.”

For years, Russia’s communications

regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, has tried to force large technology companies to move the data of Russian users to servers in Russia. Google, Facebook and Twitter have all been accused of violating the 2015 law and ordered to pay fines.

Apple was fined Tuesday for the first time, the Interfax news agency reported. It said an Apple

TANIA GIL-PADILLA, Globe Business vice president for enterprise sales, gave a warm welcome to the guests.

representative argued in court that the collection of data in Russia wasn’t handled by Apple Inc. but by a separate entity, Apple Distribution. A Roskomnadzor representative insisted that Apple was responsible.

Airbnb, Pinterest and the video streaming service Twitch were fined 2 million rubles last month under the same law. AP

How c-commerce is shaping brand love THE messaging platform is making e-commerce a whole lot easier for businesses and consumers alike.

Whiskey business: A masterclass in malt and digital transformation

W

HEN it comes to messaging apps, I usually reserve Viber for work and only use it for a few of my clients. But when I resumed my toy collecting during the pandemic, it was Viber that helped me connect with toy communities and stores.

The ToysRUs community, for one, was a lot of help, as I could chat with them to ask if they still had stocks of some figure I was looking and they would point me to the nearest branch. I could then call the branch and arrange for pickup. I didn’t mind if it took a few hours for them to reply; after all, I’d rather wait for the next day’s reply on Viber than spend 10 minutes listening to hold music.

A LITTLE MORE CONVERSATION, A LOT MORE ACTION

IT turns out that I was already engaged in conversational commerce even before I realized it.

Conversational commerce or c-commerce refers to using messaging platforms by brands to sell products and services and provide after-sales customer support. Many consider it the next step in the evolution of e-commerce, and big and small brands have witnessed its phenomenal rise, particularly at the height of the lockdowns brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. The key benefit of conversational commerce for businesses is that companies can provide a more personalized experience for their customers. This can include recommendations, assistance with orders, and answering customers’ questions during and after the purchase.

There’s a lot for brands to like about c-commerce.

At a recent press lunch, I met with Rakuten Viber’s chief revenue officer Cristina Constandache, Global Sales and B2B marketing senior director Etienne Dupont, and senior messaging partnership manager Berina Tanovic to discuss how the communications platform is shaping the future of conversational commerce.

They explained how c-commerce remains to become an important business and marketing tool in the post-pandemic world, especially in the Philippines, which turns out to be one of the app’s key growth markets in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

Viber stressed that there had been a 123 percent growth in its conversational business messages.

Based on the data collected from January to May 2022, business messages are emerging to become a vital fixture in business plans. In the Philippines, 51 percent of the top brands that are using Viber Business Messages come from finance, 27 percent from retail, 10 percent from hospitality and travel, 6 percent from telecommunications and IT, 3 percent from health and insurance, and another 3 percent from logistics.

Constandache emphasized how Filipinos remain avid social media and app users, spending an average of 5 hours and 47 minutes online through their mobile. But brands should also remember that 69 percent of APAC consumers, including Filipinos, prefer using mobile messaging for customer service.

She also pointed out a 3.1x increase in user lifetimes among APAC brands that engage customers via a

mobile communication channel, allowing them to move customers down the funnel.

Dupont then highlighted specific Viber solutions for each point in a marketing funnel. Viber offers branded Stickers and Lenses, Viber Ads, Business Messages, Chatbots, and Flash calls with Business calls that will be launched soon to help build awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty.

He also emphasized the role and practical use cases of Viber Business Messages as it can help brands manage bookings, orders and deliveries, and even provide post-sales support and collect feedback.

This c-commerce tool allows two-way conversations and enhances chats by allowing brands and users to exchange files, photos and videos.

As 82 percent of consumers expect an immediate response to their queries, chatbots, also offered by Viber, brands can now provide their customers with an elevated automated messaging service available 24/7, offering more perks like opportunities to shop and pay for items within a single app.

Tanovic shared the success story of several brands that trusted Viber’s business solutions.

QuadX, a Philippine-based company specializing in digital logistics and e-commerce fulfillment and payments, recently launched ShippingCart Plus, allowing subscribers to chat with a Personal Account Manager via Viber’s conversational business messages. Like a concierge, users can ask live agents for sale alerts, shopping advice, follow-up shipments, special handling, etc. This responds to the study that 74 percent of customers prefer messaging with businesses if a real person is replying. As a result, ShippingCart has 100 percent customer satisfaction.

Another successful example is the Primer Group of Companies. With the help of Viber’s official partner Infobip, they enabled online purchases with digital vouchers using codes with discounts sent through Viber Business Messages. The results were quite telling: the brand achieved a 53 percent code redemption conversion rate and a 401 percent uptick in total sales.

And the possibilities for brands and users are limitless, especially with Viber’s long-term vision to become a super-app, a single gateway to multiple services, as Cristina Constandache pointed out.

“Today, people no longer want to use apps for different needs separately. On average, app users spend 77 percent of their time on their top 3 apps and almost half of their time in one single app. People

WHISKEY connoisseur Francis Hasegawa entertains CIOs with a Whiskey 101 session.

nowadays seek one gateway to many options in one place,” said Constandache. “Viber’s long-term goals for consumers and brands form a single allencompassing strategy of becoming a super-app: to maximize the utility of the app for the user base so that consumers could solve as many tasks as possible without leaving the comfort of the app, and to allow brands to reach their audience at each stage of the customer journey.”

PLAYING FOR CRYPTO WITH METAVERSEGO WITH Filipino mobile Internet users reaching over 80 million this 2022 and a third of this dabbling into play-to-earn platforms, MetaverseGo is expected to help propel the gaming community into the future.

MetaverseGo is a decentralized blockchain platform that provides gamers and newbie players easy access to play-and-earn games, guild participation, NFT collection, and access to other decentralized applications. The platform promises fast and easy access through a user’s mobile number.

The project’s founder and CEO, Ash Mandhyan previously worked with Lazada, Facebook, and TikTok parent company ByteDance. With a strong background in digital retail for over 14 years, Mandhyan returns to his roots as a start-up builder.

MetaverseGo will launch an app that will make it easier to access NFT-based games. Instead of the user having to create a crypto wallet and do other complicated tasks, the app will help them with some of these steps requiring only their mobile number.

The app will also allow players to find legitimate games or projects as rated by the community to avoid the issue of players running into scam projects.

From the user’s perspective, there are many different ways to interact with the platform. Users can track their holdings, send and receive digital assets, invest in NFT collections and play various NFT games. Web3 entrepreneurs can also use the platform to reach out to their stakeholders.

Users can search for guilds and play games without needing a hefty investment. In fact, all you need is a SIM to get you started.

MetaverseGo is now open for early access registration. Those who sign up get a chance to win and own limited edition NFTs. More information is available at www. metaversego.gg. ■

IN the fast-paced world of information technology and digital transformation, it pays for all the leaders behind tech-led enterprises to take it slow after a long, tiring day. And what better way to wind down than savoring the finest whiskeys in existence?

For these tech moguls, Globe Business hosted its first-ever “Whiskey Business,” a masterclass in malt, laced with a grand prix in ICT solutions. A speakeasythemed social event, sponsored by Zoom, Whiskey Business raised a toast to CIOs and innovation enablers to empower them with the best of ICT solutions as they propel their enterprises forward.

The whiskey tasting segment was opened by Tania Gil-Padilla, vice president for enterprise sales for Globe Business, who shared, “The pandemic has driven digital transformation in the past couple of years, and CIOs have become instrumental in leading their organizations through those times.

But this night is a celebration of the successes amid the challenging times, and a chance to take a break from online platforms and make more meaningful connections in person.”

It was all fun, laughter, and a bit of friendly competition done through a quick round of games where Globe Business introduced their ICT solutions as they dove deeper into tasting whiskey notes.

Francis Hasegawa, one of Manila’s best whiskey connoisseurs, showcased the unique taste of the whiskey flights with that of the distinctive attributes of Globe’s partners, Zoom, Cascadeo, Genesys and Third Pillar.

“The demands of businesses and their customers have shifted so much that we constantly need to innovate and introduce best-in-class ICT solutions where they are needed. Our objective remains clear—to be the top provider and best partner in bringing companies to the future by going beyond transactional conversations, seeking stronger partnerships, and accompanying them in their digital transformation journey,” shared Raymond Policarpio, vice president for product management and marketing at Globe Business, Enterprise Group.

CRISTINA CONSTANDACHE, Rakuten Viber chief revenue officer

World Features

wwww.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Saturday, July 16, 2022 A13

Russia aims to control oil pricing by creating own natl benchmark

R

ussia’s government has made a plan to create a national oil benchmark next year, as it seeks to protect itself from efforts by the West to restrict the flow of petrodollars to the country.

Key ministries, domestic oil producers and the central bank plan to launch oil trading on a national platform in October, according to a document seen

by Bloomberg News. Russia will work to attract foreign partners to buy oil, with the aim of achieving sufficient trading volumes to establish a pricing benchmark between March and July of 2023, according to the plan.

Russia has been trying to create

its own oil benchmark for more than a decade, with little success.

Some of the country’s producers have sold batches of crude for export at the Moscow-based Spimex commod it y e xc ha nge, but t he volu mes t raded haven’t been h i g h e nou g h t o e s t a b l i s h a globa l ly accepted benc hma rk.

The nation’s ambitions have intensified after its invasion of Ukraine prompted a swathe of Western oil sanctions. Last month,

Group of Seven nations agreed to urgently explore how to curb Moscow’s revenue by imposing a cap on the price of its oil.

Russia’s primary export grade of crude oil, called Urals, is typically bought and sold at a price expressed as a discount to North Sea benchmark Brent crude. Since the invasion, that discount has widened significantly as sanctions reduced the appeal of Urals. Russian crude averaged some $84 a barrel from June 15 to July 14, according to the Finance Ministry. That compares with an average Brent price of around $110 a barrel over the period.

Never t heless, t he broader rally in global prices has meant the flow of petrodollars into the Kremlin’s coffers has continued unabated.

Two Russian officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity,

confirmed that work is ongoing on a national benchmark, saying the country seeks to ensure it can sell its oil without any external pressure or restrictions.

The G-7 proposal only further proved the necessity of an independent Russian benchmark, said one official.

An executive at an Russian oil producer, who also spoke on a condition of anonymity as talks aren’t public yet, confirmed there have been discussions about a benchmark.

The proposal is still at its early stage and the governmental bodies have yet to determine whether the nation needs any additional legal frameworks for oil trading at the platform, according to the document. The Russian Energy Ministry didn’t respond to a Bloomberg request for a comment.

Bloomberg News

Europe emerges as top market for US crude as war upends trade

E

urope has surpassed Asia to become the top consumer of American oil for the first time in six years.

From Januar y to May this year, Europe took an average of about 213.1 million barrels of crude while Asia received 191.1 million barrels, according to the latest available US Census Bureau data. The last time Asia’s volumes fell behind Europe for the same five-month period was in 2016, when the US reversed its crude export ban, data show.

This shift in oil flows underscores how significantly Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has redirected energy supplies.

In an effort to cut off funding for Putin’s war, the US and other nations have imposed sanctions on Russian oil. As a result, more European nations have turned to the US for oil imports, while Russia offers its crude at steep discounts to countries like India and China, which have not imposed any bans.

As Europe tries to lessen its

dependence on Russian energy and switches to sweeter crudes to replace Russian oil, it’s likely these trade-flow patterns persist, Christopher Haines, global crude analyst for Energy Aspects, said by email.

US crude production is growing but not fast enough to accommodate the needs of both Asia and Europe. Additionally, the Middle East appears to be constrained in how much more it can send to Europe.

The region’s largest producers,

25 million kids missed routine vaccinations because of Covid

G

ENEVA—About 25 million children worldwide have missed out on rout i ne i m mu n i z at ion s a g a i n st common diseases like diptheria, largely because the coronavirus pandemic disrupted regular health services or triggered misinformation about vaccines, according to the UN. In a new report published Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF said their figures show 25 million children last year failed to get vaccinated against diptheria, tetanus and pertussis, a marker for childhood immunization coverage, continuing a downward trend that began in 2019.

“This is a red alert for child health,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s Executive Director.

“We are witnessing the largest sustained drop in childhood immunization in a generation,” she said, adding that the consequences would be measured in lives lost.

Data showed the vast majority of the children who failed to get immunized were living in developing countries, namely Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines. While vaccine coverage fell in every world region, the worst effects were seen in East Asia and the Pacific.

Experts said this “ historic backsliding” in vaccination coverage was especially disturbing since it was occurring as rates of severe malnutrition were rising.

Malnourished children typically have weaker immune systems and infections like measles can often prove fatal to them.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are already struggling to meet their OPEC+ production commitments to the OPEC+ agreement. Other suppliers, like Libya, have been grappling with political unrest that has limited exports.

“All eyes will be on how OPEC manages to increase its capacity for higher production in the year ahead and how much market share it can regain,” said Elisabeth Murphy, an upstream analyst for consultant ESAI. Bloomberg News

Ivana Trump, first wife of ex-president, dies at 73

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An infant receives a routine vaccination at First Georgia Physician Group Pediatrics in Fayetteville, Ga., Aug. 17, 2021. About 25 million children worldwide missed out on routine immunizations against diseases like diptheria, largely because the coronavirus pandemic disrupted regular health services or triggered misinformation about vaccines, according to the UN. In a new report published Friday, July 15, 2022 the World Health Organization and UNICEF said their data show 25 million children last year failed to get vaccinated against diptheria, tetanus and pertussis, a marker for childhood immunization coverage. AP

“The convergence of a hunger crisis with a growing immunization gap threatens to create the conditions for a child survival crisis,” the UN said.

Scientists said low vaccine coverage rates had already resulted in preventable outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio.

In March 2020, WHO and partners asked countries to suspend their polio eradication efforts amid the accelerating Covid-19 pandemic. There have since been dozens of polio epidemics in more than 30 countries.

“This is particularly tragic as tremendous progress was made in the two decades before the Covid pandemic to improve childhood vaccination rates globally,” said Helen Bedford, a professor of children’s health at University

College London, who was not connected to the UN report. She said the news was shocking but not surprising, noting that immunization services are frequently an “early casualty” of major social or economic disasters.

Dr. David Elliman, a consultant pediatrician at Britain’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, said it was critical to reverse the declining vaccination trend among children.

“The effects of what happens in one part of the world can ripple out to affect the whole globe,” he said in a statement, noting the rapid spread of Cov id-19 and more recently, monkeypox.

“Whether we act on the basis of ethics or ‘enlightened self interest’, we must put (children) top of our list of priorities.” AP

EW YORK—Ivana Trump, a skierturned-businesswoman who formed half of a publicity power couple in the 1980s as the first wife of former President Donald Trump and mother of his oldest children, has died in New York City, her family announced Thursday. She was 73.

The former president posted on his social media app that she died at her Manhattan home.

“She was a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The couple shared three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.

“She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her,” he wrote. “Rest In Peace, Ivana!”

Two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that police are investigating whether Ivana Trump fell down the stairs and believe her death was accidental.

She was found unconscious near a staircase in the home, the people said. The people could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The medical examiner’s office will determine an official cause of death.

“It’s been a very sad day, a very sad day,” Eric Trump said as he left his mother’s home near Central Park.

In a statement, he and his siblings called her “an incredible woman—a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty and caring mother and friend.”

“She fled from communism and embraced this country,” the three said. “She taught her children about grit and toughness, compassion and determination.”

Ivanka Trump posted childhood photos of herself laughing and smiling with her mother, who she described as “brilliant, charming, passionate and wickedly funny.”

A Czech-born ski racer and sometime model, she met the future president in the 1970s and quickly perceived him as “smart and funny—an all-America good guy,” as she wrote in a 2017 book. The couple married in 1977. AP

BusinessMirror

A14 A6 Saturday, July 16, 2022

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS No.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

No.

24 INCH GAUGE CONSTRUCTION INC. L4 Blk. 4, Near Kay Buboy Bridge, San Dionisio, City Of Parañaque

LI, XIN Marketing Specialist 1.

Brief Job Description: Responsible for coordinating with other marketing and sales professionals to implement innovative campaigns for branding or product launches.

Basic Qualification: Ability to work under pressure and motivation to succeed in a competitive environment; Should have a bachelor’s degree in journalism, marketing, communications or a related field; Good communication and interpersonal skills Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

XU, HAIPO Marketing Specialist 2.

Brief Job Description: Responsible for coordinating with other marketing and sales professionals to implement innovative campaigns for branding or product launches.

Basic Qualification: Ability to work under pressure and motivation to succeed in a competitive environment; Should have a bachelor’s degree in journalism, marketing, communications or a related field; Good communication and interpersonal skills Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

THONG PHU LAY Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking 14.

3.

Brief Job Description: Manage large amount of calls, handle customer concerns ANGGI Indonesian-speaking Customer Service Officer

4.

Brief Job Description: Manage large amount of calls, handle customer concerns

ICHA ATHING CIA Indonesian-speaking Customer Service Officer 5.

Brief Job Description: Manage large amount of calls, handle customer concerns

JEFFRI Indonesian-speaking Customer Service Officer 6.

Brief Job Description: Manage large amount of calls, handle customer concerns MICHEAL Indonesian-speaking Customer Service Officer

7.

Brief Job Description: Manage large amount of calls, handle customer concerns

PRAMONO Indonesian-speaking Customer Service Officer 8.

Brief Job Description: Manage large amount of calls, handle customer concerns

TEDY CEN JAYA Indonesian-speaking Customer Service Officer 9.

Brief Job Description: Manage large amount of calls, handle customer concerns

15.

10.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication mandarin speaking.

HUI CHEE HOWE Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking 11.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication mandarin speaking.

LAU DUC HOA Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking 12.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication mandarin speaking.

NGUYEN THI NGA Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking 13.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication mandarin speaking.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication mandarin speaking.

GAO, KEJI Mandarin Customer Service Representative 16.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status LIU, LEI Mandarin Customer Service Representative

17.

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status ZHANG, YUJUN Mandarin Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking in foreign language

18.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ACCENTURE, INC. 7f, Robinsons Cybergate Tower 1, Pioneer St, City Of Mandaluyong

Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking in foreign language

19.

Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking in foreign language

20.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking in foreign language

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking in foreign language

Brief Job Description: Communicate with the client functional design incharge about the detail of requirement definition and function design; explain development status and issue with team leads of the client; understand the clients’ original develop/runtime architecture and develop standards (including deliverable flow, template, description level); perform knowledge transfer about business requirement/functional design written in required language to team lead and members.

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing customer needs.

RIHOT JESRON BUTAR BUTAR Transaction Processing Associate 21.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

Brief Job Description: Suggest innovative and more effective ways to accomplish own tasks or overcome obstacles

OZAKI, KOICHI President, Director And Chairman Of The Board 22.

Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing customer needs.

Brief Job Description: Overall in charge of direction and profitability of the company

KUWATA, YUSUKE Aircraft Maintenance Specialist

23.

Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing customer needs.

Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing customer needs.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing customer needs.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

27.

28.

29.

30.

Basic Qualification: Graduate of four-year degree in top university, experience of not less than four years in top management position

Brief Job Description: Ensuring an aircraft operates properly and safely; entails assessing and handling repairs; performing regular inspections and updating aircraft as needed; keep detailed records of the maintenance performed; uphold safety and security measures; ensure compliance with aviation safety rules and regulations

31.

24.

Brief Job Description: Manage the financial and administration teams to achieve company financial goals.

32.

33.

25.

Brief Job Description: Responsible for designs, develops, modifies, debugs / maintain software systems

Brief Job Description: Input finance data into the system.

OONRUA, WATCHARAWADEE Marketing Executive Brief Job Description: Conduct and analyze market research

Brief Job Description: Serves as a liaison between the customer and various departments & ensures that basic CS functions are performed.

Brief Job Description: Serves as a liaison between the customer and various departments & ensures that basic CS functions are performed.

Brief Job Description: Responsible for providing team management and administrative support for risk and business teams in controls related to credit documentation

TIARA ADISTY WOREK Bahasa Indonesian Language-officer Fund Management

Basic Qualification: Must be fluent in Japanese and English; can read and write Japanese and English; must have at least 10 year experience as aircraft maintenance in a Japanese company or has been assigned in Japan; must have at least the following certification or higher: aircraft maintenance engineer. Class 1, aircraft line maintenance mechanic.

Class 1, aircraft factory engineer

35.

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

36.

Brief Job Description: Must ensure their funds’ reporting requirements are met

DONG PHUONG HONG TRANG Vietnamese Language - Supervisor Marketing Brief Job Description: Identify, develop and implement new strategies for selling products or services.

DUONG HOANG KHUONG DUY Vietnamese Language-officer Marketing

Basic Qualification: Must be appointed by the Director Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Diploma/certificate, college degree on any course, banking/finance is a plus. Must be a native Indonesian/Malaysian/ Taiwanese/Singaporean fluent in English and native language.

Basic Qualification: Must be a native Indonesian/Malaysian/ Taiwanese/Singaporean fluent in English and native language.

Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999 Basic Qualification: Diploma/certificate, college degree on any course, banking/finance is a plus. Must be a native Indonesian/Malaysian/ Taiwanese/Singaporean fluent in English and native language.

Basic Qualification: Must be a native Indonesian/Malaysian/ Taiwanese/Singaporean fluent in English and native language.

Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999 Basic Qualification: Must be a native Indonesian/Malaysian/ Taiwanese/Singaporean fluent in English and native language.

Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999

Brief Job Description: Initiate conversation to uncover customer’s need; Develop rapport with the customer; Have complete knowledge on services rendered and complete line of products, Promote business and products.

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Management or any business course Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Degree holder, must be fluent in Vietnamese to cater foreign market.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Degree Holder, Must be fluently speak and write Vietnamese language; Can work under pressure Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

CGI (PHILIPPINES) INC. 2/f One World Square, Mckinley Hill, Pinagsama, City Of Taguig

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

BIGCAT SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS, INC. 18/f Pbcom Tower, 6795 Ayala Avenue Cor. Rufino Street, Salcedo Vill., Bel-air, City Of Makati

34.

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree and has depth knowledge in the domain (Technology and Products)

MERINA Finance Executive

VAN NGOC TAM Risk Analyst

SHARMA, DAYANAND Director Consulting Delivery

AMDOCS PHILIPPINES INC. 23rd, 25th, And 26th Floors Eco Tower, 32nd St. Cor. 9th Ave. Bonifacio Global City, Fort Bonifacio, City Of Taguig JILATE, PRAJWAL Software Technical Expert

Brief Job Description: Review and signing of financial documents

SHIMIZU, YUKA Operations Executive

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree in college, proficient in English and Spanish - both written and verbal

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree and has experience in working one of the public cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999

ALSINA FORMWORK SOUTHEAST ASIA CORPORATION Unit 901 The Infinity Tower, 26th St., Fort Bonifacio, City Of Taguig GAYA TORRAS, JORDI Finance And Back Office Head

GHIYA, DHAWAL BHARAT Treasurer

DEVI Operations Executive

Basic Qualification: Can read, write, and articulate Indonesian/ Bahasa language materials Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science or other relevant fields; must be able to communicate effectively, verbally and written, in both English and required language; experienced in any of the following: o java (java ee, java se, spring, nodejs) o javascript o sap o .net o cobol o angular; knowledgeable in back-end programming language/ framework; willing to work on holidays, weekends, shifting schedules and extended working hours.

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree and has depth knowledge in the domain (Technology and Products)

AVANTICE CORPORATION 19/f Pbcom Tower, Ayala Ave., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or other relevant fields

Brief Job Description: Lead the architecture and design of Amdocs’ underlying infrastructure

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

ASIAPAY PAYMENT TECHNOLOGY CORP. U-32c 32/f Rufino Pacific Tower, Ayala Ave., San Lorenzo, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Mandarin both oral and written

Brief Job Description: Responsible for designs, develops, modifies, debugs / maintain software systems

SINGH, DHEERAJ KUMAR Solution Architect

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ALL NIPPON AIRWAYS CO., LTD. 15/f Tower 11 Rcbc Plaza, 6819 Ayala Ave., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

26.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing customer needs.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION MORE, ATMARAM CHANDRASEN Software Technical Expert

AJINOMOTO PHILIPPINES CORPORATION 11th Floor, V Corporate Centre, 125 L.p. Leviste Street, Bel-air, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

No.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking in foreign language

Brief Job Description: Communicate with the client functional design incharge about the detail of requirement definition and function design

MOREIRA DA LUZ, LUIS FILIPE App/cloud Support Analyst

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking in foreign language

Brief Job Description: Interact with customer to provide information, support and problem resolution to inquiries and order status

ELAD, PRINCE-WILL EFON App/cloud Support Analyst

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

8 STONE BUSINESS OUTSOURCING OPC 5-10/f Tower 1, Pitx Kennedy Road, Tambo, City Of Parañaque

CHUONG TUYET BINH Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication mandarin speaking.

TRAN VAN HUNG Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking

7 PRIME TECH, INC. 10/f Ewestpod, Eton Westend Square, Yakal St. Cor. Don Chino Roces Ave., San Antonio, City Of Makati AGUNG PRIYATNO Indonesian-speaking Customer Service Officer

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

www.businessmirror.com.ph

37.

Brief Job Description: Responsible for developing maintaining strong relationships with the SBU Leaders/Prime BUs/ BU leadership team with view to bring in control, transparency and win-win situations. Supporting client relationships and business development. Participate in CSAP discussion and maintaining Client development plans (CDPs) with the PBUs. Drive the monthly financial review and forecasting processes through analysis and reporting for your span of control

Basic Qualification: Bachelors/College Degree.

Minimum 10 years of Service Desk Experience Knowledge. Proven Experience as Director of Operations is required Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS No.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

No.

SANDVIK, STEFAN Manager Consulting

38.

Brief Job Description: “• Evaluate and select the right approach given the project requirements by collaborating with stakeholders to oversee project scope, direction and vision; • Identify processes and develop strategies for enhancing or further leveraging these processes; • Manages and tracks the status of requirements throughout the project lifestyle, enforce and redesign as necessary; • Communicates changes, enhancement, and modification of business requirements- verbally or through written documentation-to project managers and other stakeholders so that issues and solutions are understood.

Basic Qualification: Must be fluent in either Norwegian and in English; vocational diploma, short course certificate undergraduate, or bachelors/college degree; background and knowledge in it is preferred Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999

COGNIZANT TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS PHILIPPINES, INC. 2nd, 3rd, And 4th Floors, Science Hub Tower 4 Bldg., Mckinley Hill Cyberpark, Fort Bonifacio, City Of Taguig

EMMA ULINA KACARIBU Senior Process Executive 39.

Brief Job Description: Service Support Solution includes diagnosis, resolution and reporting of customer issues and questions relating to YouTube paid content products. Service is Tier 1 end user support with escalations to Google.

KEMALA MEDIKA PUTRI Senior Process Executive 40.

Brief Job Description: Service Support Solution includes diagnosis, resolution and reporting of customer issues and questions relating to YouTube paid content products. Service is Tier 1 end user support with escalations to Google.

41.

Brief Job Description: Provide first level resolutions for EUC and Business Applications, Ticket creation/Categorization/ Prioritization, Ticket escalation to respective Support Group

42.

Brief Job Description: Responsible for managing named customers’ relationship and ensure we deliver and demonstrate our value proposition by leveraging industry best practices in BPM/ECM domain. EM works closely with CRM and delivery head to meet the business goals and targets.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services.

TONG, XINLING Chinese Speaking Data Entry Clerk 44.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about products and services.

TRAN TUE Y Chinese Speaking Data Entry Clerk 45.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services.

XIANG, PINGAN Chinese Speaking Solutions Consultant 53.

LIU, RUYI Chinese Speaking Technical Consultant 54.

Basic Qualification: “BA or BS Degree (In lieu of degree, 4 years of relevant work experience), Minimum 2-year(s) customer service support experience (voice, email, or chat), working with direct consumers, preferably in a B2C environment, Native Bahasa Speaker

Basic Qualification: Any Science/Technical Diploma or Bachelor Degree, 3+years’experience in 24x7 operations, Basic Customer service skills, Skills in written and verbal communication Proficient in Spanish language

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written.

56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

46.

Brief Job Description: Addressing customer concerns and issues thru phone call and email.

AZWAN BIN RIDWAN CHING Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Representative

61.

47.

Brief Job Description: Addressing customer concerns and issues thru phone call and email.

GAVIN CHIN KIAN TSHUNG Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Representative

48.

Brief Job Description: Addressing customer concerns and issues thru phone call and email.

STANLEY CHIN YE FUNG Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Representative

49.

Brief Job Description: Addressing customer concerns and issues thru phone call and email.

50.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services

WU, HAIJIAN Chinese Speaking Marketing Consultant 51.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services

Brief Job Description: Providing it assistance to staff and customers.

DONG THI HAO TAM Bilingual It Support Specialist Brief Job Description: Providing it assistance to staff and customers.

HO VAN TU Bilingual It Support Specialist Brief Job Description: Providing it assistance to staff and customers.

PHANG JIAN LUN Bilingual It Support Specialist Brief Job Description: Providing it assistance to staff and customers.

TANG DIEN HAO Bilingual It Support Specialist Brief Job Description: Providing it assistance to staff and customers.

Brief Job Description: Providing helpful information, answering questions, responding to complaints and maintaining a positive, empathetic and professional attitude toward clients and managers at all times

PODUVAL, PRASHANT PADMANABHAN Assistant Vice President-transitions

62.

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Can contributes information, ideas, and research to help develop marketing strategies; can help to detail, design, and implement marketing plans for each product or service being offered.

Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking bilingual languages.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

69.

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication in Mandarin speaking

70.

CHOU, I-CHING a.k.a. KIMO CHOU Manager Brief Job Description: Manage the Loan Department

HE, YANBO Manager Of Huawei Philippines Enterprise Business Department 71.

Brief Job Description: Responsible in ensuring that the transitions are successful. Also responsible for building capability of the transitions function. Bring thought leadership to the table that improves transitions set up & implementation. Lead new business pursuits (rfps) to develop customized solutions. Will take over the transition of the specific client engagement as the lead when an opportunity translates into new business.

Execute transition of processes with end-to-end accountability.

KWON, SOMANG General Manager

Basic Qualification: College graduate

Brief Job Description: Overseeing daily business operations

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

CHU, SONGTAO Head Of F-commerce 64.

Brief Job Description: Managing the platforms and ensuring achievement of annual targets in terms of revenue and operating expenses

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 CHEN, ZHIDONG Network Sales Supervisor 65.

Brief Job Description: Develop sales strategies to achieve sales target and implement strategic plans to increase sales volume and enhance customer satisfaction

Basic Qualification: Job-relevant degree/ 5-10 yrs. Supervisory/managerial experience in logistics or operations/ multilingual

LEE KUOK KAE Business Analyst Chinese Speaking

Brief Job Description: Primarily responsible for the success of enterprise solutions management of the company in the Philippines. In charge with business operation process planning and management.

LUONG THI HUONG Customer Support Specialist 72.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service.

66.

Brief Job Description: Assist in the implementation of process improvement initiatives in terms of business analysis perspective.

NGUYEN TIEN NGOC HOANG Customer Support Specialist 73.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Credit and Loan Analyst Skills, Marketing Skills Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Basic Qualification: With at least 3-year work experience as a high-level officer, preferably as a team director in an enterprise business department or group. Have a deep understanding and must have successfully completed a cloud computing field.

Graduated with a bachelor’s degree in information & technology or other related courses.

4. Highly proficient in Chinese and English language.

Basic Qualification: Superior customer service skills, nice to have experience working with online gaming/offshore gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn, excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written.

Basic Qualification: Superior customer service skills, Nice to have experience working with online gaming/offshore gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn, Excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

NGUYEN VAN DAN Customer Support Specialist 74.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service.

Basic Qualification: Superior customer service skills, nice to have experience working with online gaming/offshore gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn, excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

NHU THI HUONG Customer Support Specialist 75.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service.

Basic Qualification: Superior customer service skills, nice to have experience working with online gaming/offshore gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn, excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

VONG THI MY LE Customer Support Specialist 76.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service.

Basic Qualification: Superior customer service skills, nice to have experience working with online gaming/offshore gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn, excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing costumer needs

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Job-relevant degree/ 5-10 yrs. Supervisory/managerial experience in logistics or operations/ multilingual

Basic Qualification: 21 years old and above with business analyst experience.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ITECHNO SPECIALIST INC. 7/f Aseana I Bldg., Bradco Avenue Aseana Business Park, Tambo, City Of Parañaque

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

GAMMA INTERACTIVE INC. 21/f Alphaland Makati Place, 7232 Ayala Ave. Cor. Malugay St., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Basic Qualification: Knows how to recommend potential products or services to management by collecting customer information and analyzing costumer needs

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Dynamic & result-oriented professional with over 20 years of experience in steering operations.

Project management process transitioning and training with global companies. Proven track recording monitoring multiple projects from conceptualization/ visualization to the technology mapping and final execution of projects.

Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills.

Superior written and verbal communication.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES PHILS. INC. U-5302, 53/f Pbcom Tower, 6795 Ayala Ave., Cor., V.a. Rufino St., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: College Graduate

Basic Qualification: 21 years old and above with business analyst experience.

HUA NAN COMMERCIAL BANK, LTD. MANILA BRANCH 26/f Tower 6789, 6789 Ayala Ave., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking bilingual languages.

FHM CORPORATION Unit 2101 The Finance Center 26th Street Corner 9th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Fort Bonifacio, City Of Taguig

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Build sustainable relationship of trust through open and interactive communication in Mandarin speaking

PHAM THUY LIEN Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking

Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking bilingual languages.

FLASH EXPRESS SOFTWARE (PH) CO., LTD. INC. 11/f Cybersigma, Lawton Ave., Mckinley West, Fort Bonifacio, City Of Taguig

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written

68.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Mandarin speaking customer service representative.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

LI, NING Customer Service Representative Mandarin Speaking

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking bilingual languages.

Brief Job Description: Assist in the implementation of process improvement initiatives in terms of business analysis perspective.

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

GLOBALLGA BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING, OPC Ground Level, Level 2-5 Floor, Silver City 4, Ortigas East, Ugong, City Of Pasig

Basic Qualification: Excellent in reading, writing and speaking bilingual languages.

63.

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written

67.

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Mandarin speaking customer service representative.

WAN, PEI-YING Business Analyst Chinese Speaking

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

DOMINUS VISA CONSULTANCY INC. 37th Floor Lkg Tower,, 6801 Ayala Avenue,, Bel-air, City Of Makati HU, RUIXUE Chinese Speaking Marketing Consultant

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

EXLSERVICE PHILIPPINES, INC. 6th Floor, One E-com Center, Harbor Drive, Mall Of Asia Complex, Pasay City

Basic Qualification: Mandarin speaking customer service representative.

Basic Qualification: Mandarin speaking customer service representative.

CHAU DUY LONG Bilingual It Support Specialist

LEE, JAEWON Customer Service Manager

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written

No.

EPOST EDUCENTER INC. Unit B & C, 20/f Strata 2000 Bldg., Don Francisco Ortigas Jr. Rd., Ortigas Center, San Antonio, City Of Pasig

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

EASYTECH SUPPORT INC. 9-11/f, 14/f Capella Bldg., Asean Drive Filinvest, Alabang, City Of Muntinlupa

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience, good in oral communication and written.

Brief Job Description: Researches and develops various marketing strategies for products and services and implements marketing plans and works to meet sales quotas

A15

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Basic Qualification: Must be fluent in English and can speak Indian language. Must have an engineering degree and/or MBA or above & have at least 6 years of experience in delivery, project management, client management, presales or same/related field as engagement manager.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services

XU, XUSHENG Marketing And Sales Agent

DAXIFA CORPORATION Mpire Center 93 West Avenue, Project 7, 1, Bungad, Quezon City ALDWIN AU YONG HONG KIET Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Representative

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services

55.

CRONYX INC. Flr. No. 4th-10th, Yinhope Bldg., Dela Rama Cor. Zoili Hilario St., Seascape Village, Ccp Complex Subd., Zone 10, Barangay 76, Pasay City

43.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

CHEN, WENJIN Chinese Speaking Data Entry Clerk

52.

EASTERN GOLD CORPORATION 503, Nueva St., Barangay 289, Binondo, City Of Manila

COLLABERA TECHNOLOGIES PRIVATE LIMITED, INC. U-40 A-d, 40/f Rufino Pacific Tower, 6784 Ayala Ave., San Lorenzo, City Of Makati

NALLEPPILLY HARI, VIVEK Engagement Manager

LI, DUOWEI Chinese Speaking Solutions Consultant

Basic Qualification: “BA or BS Degree (In lieu of degree, 4 years of relevant work experience), Minimum 2-year(s) customer service support experience (voice, email, or chat), working with direct consumers, preferably in a B2C environment, Native Bahasa Speaker

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

LOPEZ ROJAS, SANDRA LILIANA Systems Engineer

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Saturday, July 16, 2022

VU THI HONG THAI Customer Support Specialist 77.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service.

Basic Qualification: Superior customer service skills, nice to have experience working with online gaming/offshore gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn, excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS No.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION LOAN CHAU NGOC ANH Vietnamese Customer Service

127.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

NGO THI ANH Vietnamese Customer Service 128.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

NGUYEN THI HONG NHUNG Vietnamese Customer Service 129.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

PHAM THI THANH Vietnamese Customer Service 130.

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speak and write fluently (native language & English) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speak and write fluently (native language & English)

No.

MEGA PUSPITA Indonesian Accounting Officer 143.

131.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

RUNGSIMUNTUCHAT, NUTTHAWUT Business Development Manager / Commercial Fuel & Lubes Manager

144.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speak and write fluently (native language & English)

THONG CAI DUNG Vietnamese Customer Service 132.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

TRAN THI YEN Vietnamese Customer Service 133.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

VU DINH TUNG Vietnamese Customer Service 134.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speak and write fluently (native language & English)

Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speaks and write fluently (native language).

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speaks and write fluently (native language).

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

OCTAGON PRIME OUTSOURCING SERVICES INC. Ub 111 Paseo De Roxas Bldg., Paseo De Roxas, San Lorenzo, City Of Makati DENG, WENYI Mandarin Technical Support 135.

Brief Job Description: Provide specialized services to assist end-users in technology needs SU, GUANLIN Mandarin Technical Support

136.

Brief Job Description: Provide specialized services to assist end-users in technology needs WANG, WENCHUAN Mandarin Technical Support

137.

Brief Job Description: Provide specialized services to assist end-users in technology needs

Basic Qualification: Fluent in mandarin, both oral and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in mandarin, both oral and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in mandarin, both oral and written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ONE LEG KICKING VENTURES INC. 7/f Ba Lepanto Bldg., Paseo De Roxas, Bel-air, City Of Makati BUDI ASWIN Cuisine Specialist 138.

139.

Brief Job Description: Preparing and serving food in accordance with recipes and quality standard DEDI MULYADI F&B (Food & Beverage) Captain Brief Job Description: Plan, forecast and execute food and beverage orders LEE YOKE CHOY Head Chef

140.

Brief Job Description: Creating menu items, recipes and developing dishes ensuring variety and quality

Basic Qualification: Excellent in Western, Asian and Indonesian Cuisine Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Excellent in Western, Asian and Malaysian Cuisine Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

141.

Brief Job Description: Helps gain customer’s loyalty to the company and its services

Basic Qualification: Good oral and written communication skills in mandarin. At least 6 months of work related experience Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

146.

142.

Brief Job Description: Lead the transport planning team and take responsibility in growing the team and delivering projects.

Basic Qualification: 5 to 10 years experience in business development including forming strategies in business sector.

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

Brief Job Description: Develop business proposals, analyze current and past expenses, develop creative strategies

LIU, YIMING Chinese Customer Service Representative 147.

Salary Range: Php 60,000 - Php 89,999

Basic Qualification: Bachelor’s degree in economics, finance, marketing or business development. Must have solid experience in business dev. And commercial fuel and lubes marketing, networking, persuasion, prospecting, public speaking, research writing, closing skills, sales, planning, identification of customer need

Basic Qualification: Post graduate diploma or master’s degree in engineering, business administration or related field. Must have extensive background in the field of petroleum, oil, lubricants operations and logistics, petroleum distribution operations, product inventory management

Brief Job Description: Answering inquiries, resolving problems, fulfilling requests and maintaining database

Basic Qualification: College Graduate, Fluent in English, Preferably 6 Mos1 Year Customer Service Experience

158.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

148.

149.

LI, CHANGYU Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Brief Job Description: Responsible for inbound and outbound service calls

159.

ZHANG, FENGJIAO Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Brief Job Description: Responsible for inbound and outbound service calls

160.

150.

Brief Job Description: Provide technical consultancy service on power transmission matters.

151.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services HOANG QUOC HUY Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

152.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services LE THI PHUONG Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

153.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services LE TIEN NGHIA Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

154.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services NGO THUY DUNG Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

155.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services NGUYEN DUC LINH Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

156.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services NGUYEN QUANG THANG Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

157.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

161.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services TRAN THANH MANH Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

162.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services TRAN THI NGOC DIEP Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

163.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services TRAN TRONG HIEU Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

164.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

SUNTOUCH TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION 747 N Padilla St., 067, Barangay 646, San Miguel, City Of Manila Basic Qualification: Able to speak and write in Mandarin. Proficient in MS Office, with exceptional knowledge of Excel and PowerPoint

FANG, WENZHAO Human Resource Officer (mandarin Speaking) 165.

Brief Job Description: Responsible for hiring, developing and looking after employees.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

TELEHEALTH SOLUTIONS INC. Unit 604, The Infinity Tower, 26th Street Bonifacio Global City, Fort Bonifacio, City Of Taguig

PASTUSHENKA, VIKTORYIA Community Manager For EU Users 166.

Brief Job Description: Design engagement activities with different international communities. Create program for improving company’s image in different locations. Find and execute proper communication of campaigns in different languages for targeted regions

Basic Qualification: Can speak fluently German, Russian and English communicate with targeted regions. Experience in organizing business operations - for organizing community engagement campaigns. Experience as executive assistant - as extension of the president for proper communication Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 TIAN XIA TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL, INC. Bldg. B Filinvest Cyberzone 6, Bay City, Barangay 76, Pasay City

Basic Qualification: Fluent in English. Bachelor of science in any fields or relevant experience in skg technologies.

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

SOMI UNLIMITED SOLUTIONS, INC. 10/f Tower 2 Double Dragon Plaza Bldg., Edsa Corner Macapagal Ave. St. Zone 10, District 1, Barangay 76, Pasay City BUI VAN LUC Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

TRAN QUANG THAI Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: Excellent in Reading, Writing and Speaking in Mandarin

SKF PHILIPPINES INC. G/f Alegria, 2229 Chino Roces Ave., San Lorenzo, City Of Makati

BEGGS, DAVID JOHN Power Transmission (PT) Technical Manager

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

PHAM VAN THANH Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: Excellent in Reading, Writing and Speaking in Mandarin Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

PHAM CONG THANH Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College Graduate, Fluent in English, Preferably 6mos1year Customer Service Experience

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION NGUYEN VAN CHUYEN Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

Salary Range: Php 150,000 - Php 499,999

SEAGULL-WORLD INC. Unit 2807 28/f Cityland, Pasong Tamo Tower, 2210 Chino Roces Ave., Pio Del Pilar, City Of Makati

OVE ARUP & PARTNERS HONGKONG LIMITED 36th/f The Podium, 12 Adb Avenue Cor. Ortigas, Wack-wack Greenhills, City Of Mandaluyong DE BEER, LIZE Transport Planning Leader

Brief Job Description: Responsible in the distribution operations for Subic, Clark, Cebu and Batangas terminal depots. Manage inventory, marine and tank truck hauling accreditation planning, scheduling and dispatching. Facilitation and distribution of quality petroleum products to meet marketing customer

TO TRUNG KIEN Business Lending Development Officer

OUTWIT, INC. 2/f Marvin Plaza, 2153 Chino Roces Ave., Pio Del Pilar, City Of Makati WANG, JUI-YANG Mandarin Speaking Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: College Graduate, Speaks and Write Fluently (English and Korean)

RIGHT CHOICE FINANCE CORP. 5e-1 Electra House Bldg., 115-117 Esteban Street, San Lorenzo, City Of Makati

Basic Qualification: Excellent in Western, Asian and Indonesian Cuisine Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

No.

Salary Range: Php 90,000 - Php 149,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speaks and write fluently (native language).

Brief Job Description: Supervises a team of sales and operations staff expected to deliver fuels and lubricants sales and technical services group, network, and profitability targets of designated sales areas. Business targets include sale sectors of retail lubes, lubes distributor, fuel commercial & lubes, high street and product storage logistics. Responsible for P&L in commercial and industrial fuel & lubes sales activities in line with the overall targets and goal

WUNGWISET, NIKORN Operations And Logistics Manager

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

PTT PHILIPPINES CORPORATION 32/f Lkg Tower, 6801 Ayala Ave., Bel-air, City Of Makati

145.

PHAN THI ANH Vietnamese Customer Service

Brief Job Description: Track main industry trends in China through blogs, micro blogs and forums

A17

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS

PT INDUSTRI JAMU DAN FARMASI SIDO MUNCUL TBK PHILIPPINE BRANCH Unit 1807 Cityland Pasong Tamo Tower, 2210 Chino Roces Ave., Pio Del Pilar, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speak and write fluently (native language & English)

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Saturday, July 16, 2022

HO, MEI-HSUAN Chinese Marketing Specialist 167.

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills)

NGUYEN THI THANH TRUC Bilingual Customer Service Officer 168.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Prepare product or service reports by collecting and analyzing customer information CHONG CHEE SENG Bilingual Field Marketing Officer

169.

Brief Job Description: Define a region-specific marketing plan that supports the regional sales strategy

Basic Qualification: Proficient in speaking, reading and writing in bilingual languages Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in speaking, reading and writing in mandarin Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

WISHLAND SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY INC. 28/f Techzone Condo Corp., 213 Buendia Ave., San Antonio, City Of Makati

170.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills)

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

TOTAL CREST BUSINESS SUPPORT, INC. 26/f & 27/f Alphaland Corporate Tower, Ayala Ave. Extn. Cor. Malugay St., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Basic Qualification: Fluent in Vietnamese (Verbal and Written Skills) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Conduct market research; brainstorm and develop ideas for creative marketing campaign; assist in outbound and inbound marketing activities

Basic Qualification: - At least 19y/old - Ability to speak write and communicate in Vietnamese

LYNDON CHIA SENG SIANG Chinese Language-customer Service Staff Brief Job Description: Deal with and help resolve customer complaints

Basic Qualification: Proficient in Reading, Writing and Speaking in in Chinese Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

ZIMI TECH, INC. 29th/f Burgundy Corporate Tower 252, Sen. Gil Puyat Ave., Pio Del Pilar, City Of Makati GOU, XINGXIN Chinese Language Customer Service Representative 171.

Brief Job Description: Professionally handle incoming requests from customers and ensure that issues are resolve both promptly and thoroughly.

Basic Qualification: Proficient in writing, reading and speaking in both English and Korean/ Bahasa/Chinese/Malay.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 *Date Generated: Jul 15, 2022

Any person in the Philippines who is competent, able and willing to perform the services for which the foreign national is desired may file an objection at DOLE National Capital Region located at DOLE-NCR Building, 967 Maligaya St., Malate Manila, within 30 days after this publication.

Please inform DOLE National Capital Region if you have any information on criminal offense committed by the foreign nationals.

BusinessMirror

A16 A6 Saturday, July 16, 2022

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS No.

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

WANG, YUPING Customer Support Specialist 78.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE Basic Qualification: Superior Customer Service Skills, Nice to Have Experience Working With Online Gaming/Offshore Gaming Industry or Less Experience but a Good Attitude and Motivation to Learn, Excellent Communication Skills in Chinese, Both Spoken and Written Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

WU, JINWU Customer Support Specialist 79.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service

Basic Qualification: Superior Customer Service Skills, Nice to Have Experience Working With Online Gaming/Offshore Gaming Industry or Less Experience but a Good Attitude and Motivation to Learn, Excellent Communication Skills in Chinese, Both Spoken and Written

No.

89.

ZHANG, YANPING Customer Support Specialist 80.

Brief Job Description: To work with a variety of customers and use your expert relationship-building skills to provide worldclass service

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

CHAU VA CU Gaming Support Specialist 81.

Brief Job Description: Being the voice of our players within our fast-growing online/offshore gaming platform, stay on track with the game updates, implementing procedures to support players, work creatively across multiple projects and platforms at the same time.

Basic Qualification: A passion for delivering excellent customer service, Excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written, Previous experience in a similar role in the offshore/ online gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

CHAU VU TIEN Gaming Support Specialist 82.

Brief Job Description: Being the voice of our players within our fast-growing online/offshore gaming platform, stay on track with the game updates, implementing procedures to support players, work creatively across multiple projects and platforms at the same time.

Basic Qualification: A passion for delivering excellent customer service, Excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written, Previous experience in a similar role in the offshore/ online gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn.

LEE, MING-CHENG Senior Vice President, Lazglobal Category Management 90.

CHENG, QI Gaming Support Specialist 83.

Brief Job Description: Being the voice of our players within our fast-growing online/offshore gaming platform, stay on track with the game updates, implementing procedures to support players, work creatively across multiple projects and platforms at the same time.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

NGUYEN THI ANH VAN Gaming Support Specialist 84.

Brief Job Description: Being the voice of our players within our fast-growing online/offshore gaming platform, stay on track with the game updates, implementing procedures to support players, work creatively across multiple projects and platforms at the same time.

Basic Qualification: A passion for delivering excellent customer service, Excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written, Previous experience in a similar role in the offshore/ online gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

TRAN THI THUY QUYEN Gaming Support Specialist 85.

Brief Job Description: Being the voice of our players within our fast-growing online/offshore gaming platform, stay on track with the game updates, implementing procedures to support players, work creatively across multiple projects and platforms at the same time.

Basic Qualification: A passion for delivering excellent customer service, Excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written, Previous experience in a similar role in the offshore/ online gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn.

CHAO, FAN-JU Chinese Customer Service Representative 86.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

HUANG, LING Chinese Customer Service Representative 87.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

SHIUNG, TZUNG-YAN Chinese Customer Service Representative 88.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

Basic Qualification: Proficient in speaking, reading and writing in English and their respective native language for the position applied for, Fluent in Chinese Mandarin is an advantage.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in speaking, reading and writing in English and their respective Native Language for the position applied for; Fluent in Chinese Mandarin is an advantage

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Brief Job Description: Will be responsible for the planning and execution to grow the overall of lazglobal team (electronic, fashion, fmcg, general merchandise) category reporting directly to the coo. He/she will supervise campaign management team.

GELDENHUYS, GERHARDUS PETRUS Mill Operations Consultant – Gold And Copper Mill Plant Retrofit Project

91.

Basic Qualification: Bachelor degree of above. At least 10 years of experience in retail (offline or online), business development, or market research. Strong analytical skills with systematic and structured thinking, excellent negotiation and problem solving skills.

Ability to work in a fastpaced and dynamic crossfunctional environment.

Good verbal and written communication skills both mandarin and English (business level).

Brief Job Description: Provide technical assistance in gold and copper mill plant upgrade/retrofit. Evaluate the present milling policies, systems and procedures, recommend and implement improvements, and safeguard quality standards. Review current department structure and capabilities of the mill department. Train and develop high potential talents.

Basic Qualification: Graduate of metallurgy, mechanical engineering or any related discipline.

At least 20 years of related work experience in gold and/or copper mill plant operations and maintenance and project management; at least 15 years in a leadership/ management role.

107.

108.

109.

110.

111.

KIM, JUNSEO Operations Manager (Korean) 92.

Brief Job Description: Operations manager in performing their duties, ensure proper staffing at all store

Basic Qualification: Must be bachelor’s / college degree in any fields, at least 2 yrs. Of working experience in the related positions, ability to maintain high level of confidentiality Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

MOA CLOUDZONE CORP. 4th-11th Flr. Nexgen Tower, C4 Rd. Edsa Ext., Barangay 76, Pasay City

93.

94.

95.

96.

97.

98.

99.

SOE MYINT OO Burmese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires CAI, ZEKAI Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires FU, KAIBO Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing Incoming calls and customer service inquires.

HUANG, ZHILIANG Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires LI, MENGMENG Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires LIU, JIACHENG Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries LIU, JIANXIN Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires LIU, SHAOQIANG Chinese Customer Service Representative

100.

101.

102.

103.

104.

105.

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries.

WU, DING Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires XIA, ZIANG Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires XIONG, ZHIHUI Chinese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires SU MING Indonesian Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires GO TIONG TAT Malaysian Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires LEE WENG KIT Malaysian Customer Service Representative

106.

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquiries.

112.

113.

114.

Salary Range: Php 500,000 and above

MAGKING SERVICES CORPORATION Unit 5d Rose Industries Bldg., #11, Pioneer Street, Kapitolyo, City Of Pasig

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Proficient in speaking, reading and writing in English and their respective Native Language for the position applied for; Fluent in Chinese Mandarin is an advantage

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

LEPANTO CONSOLIDATED MINING COMPANY 20th Floor Lepanto, Bldg 8747 Paseo De Roxas St., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 JIU ZHOU TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL, INC. U-3401 34/f Pbcom Tower, 6795 Ayala Ave. Cor. V.a. Rufino St., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Basic Qualification: Proficient in speaking, reading and writing in English and their respective Native Language for the position applied for; Fluent in Chinese Mandarin is an advantage

No.

Salary Range: Php 500,000 and above

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: A passion for delivering excellent customer service, Excellent communication skills in Chinese, both spoken and written, Previous experience in a similar role in the offshore/ online gaming industry or less experience but a good attitude and motivation to learn.

Brief Job Description: Attracts potential customers by answering product and service questions; suggesting information about other products and services

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

LAZADA E-SERVICES PHILIPPINES, INC. 23rd Floor Seven/neo, 5th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Fort Bonifacio, City Of Taguig

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Superior Customer Service Skills, Nice to Have Experience Working With Online Gaming/Offshore Gaming Industry or Less Experience but a Good Attitude and Motivation to Learn, Excellent Communication Skills in Chinese, Both Spoken and Written

ESTABLISHMENT / ADDRESS

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

BAMRUNGPHAN, WILAWAN Thai Customer Service Representative

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

115.

116.

117.

118.

119.

120.

121.

122.

123.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 124.

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires TA THI HOAN Vietnamese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires TRAN DUC MANH Vietnamese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires TRAN VAN CUONG Vietnamese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires TRAN VU TRUONG GIANG Vietnamese Customer Service Representative Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires

Brief Job Description: Developing policies relating to a company’s ethical, sustainable and environmental responsibilities.

Brief Job Description: Must be fluent in Indonesian/Bahasa/Malaysian/ Vietnamese/Thailand and English Language.

Brief Job Description: Must be fluent in Indonesian/Bahasa/Malaysian/ Vietnamese/Thailand and English Language.

Brief Job Description: Must be fluent in Indonesian/Bahasa/Malaysian/ Vietnamese/Thailand and English Language.

Brief Job Description: Assist/help customers, give customers information about product and services.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

THANT ZIN OO Myanmari Customer Service 125.

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

PHAN TRONG VUONG Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

TANG JI QIN Malaysian Customer Service

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read and write Chinese language.

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires

MEEJUM, SUWEERAYA Customer Service Representative

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

PHAM VIET HOANG Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

HUANG, DAJUN Chinese Customer Service

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: Graduate 4 years bachelor degree with critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Must be 4 years bachelor degree in any course.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Must be 4 years bachelor degree in any course.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Must be 4 years bachelor degree in any course.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Basic Qualification: With at least 6 months customer service experience/good in oral communication and written.

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

NEW ORIENTAL CLUB88 CORPORATION 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th & 10th/f, Pearl Marina Building Pacific Drive, Don Galo, City Of Parañaque

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

PHAM VAN DUC Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

LIU, LIBO Chinese Speaking Business Development Associate

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read and write Chinese language.

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires

Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

NEO INCORPORATED North Tower Centrum Bldg., Aseana Avenue, Entertainment City, Baclaran, City Of Parañaque

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read, and write Chinese language

LE THI KIEU LOAN Vietnamese Customer Service Representative

WILLY PRATAMA Indonesian Language Customer Service Representative

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, Read, and Write Chinese language

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires

JESS Indonesian Language Customer Service Representative

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read, and write Chinese language

TIONG YONG LONG Malaysian Customer Service Representative

FREDDY FUADSAM Indonesian Language Customer Service Representative

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read, and write Chinese language

Brief Job Description: Managing incoming calls and customer service inquires

EDI GO Indonesian Customer Service Supervisor

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to speak, read, and write Chinese language.

SIM BOON KIAT Malaysian Customer Service Representative

QUALIFICATION AND SALARY RANGE

MPOTECH DIGITAL SYSTEM INC. 2/f 331 Bldg., Sen. Gil Puyat Ave., Bel-air, City Of Makati

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: Able to Speak, Read, and Write Chinese Language

NAME OF FOREIGN NATIONAL , POSITION AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

THURA AUNG Myanmari Customer Service 126.

Brief Job Description: Manage incoming calls and inquiries, handling complaints, provide solutions, process customer accounts and file documents.

Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speak and write fluently (native language & English) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speak and write fluently (native language & English) Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speaks and write fluently (native language).

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speaks and write fluently (native language).

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999 Basic Qualification: College graduate, preferably 1 year experience in the similar field, speaks and write fluently (native language).

Salary Range: Php 30,000 - Php 59,999

Sports BusinessMirror

A18 | S

aturday, July 16, 2022 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

AMIT IN 9-BALL QUARTERFINALS

J

By Josef Ramos

UST like Carlo Biado the day before, multi-world champion Rubilen Amit advanced to the women’s 9-ball quarterfinals of billiards following a 9-8 victory over Pia Filler of Germany in the World Games on Friday at the Sheraton Hotel Ballroom in Birmingham, Alabama.

And just like Biado, Amit had to recover from a shaky start and frustrate her German opponent in a tightly-contested match.

The 40-year-old pool sensation from Mandaue City trailed 6-8 after the 14th rack but cleaned up the remaining three racks to nail the win and follow Carlo Biado in Saturday’s quarterfinals of the games that feature widely-played sports that aren’t on the Olympic program.

She will face another German, Veronika Ivanovskaia, who advanced after

YOUNG RISES, TIGER CRASHES S

beating Bernarda Ayala of Argentina, 9-1.

Biado scored an 11-10 sqeaker over Poland’s Wiktor Zielinski last Wednesday and will face Austrian Albin Ouschan in the men’s 9-ball quarterfinals.

Southeast Asian Games gold medalists Philip Delarmino and Leeana Bade, meanwhile, start their campaigns in muaythai also on Saturday at the Boutwell Auditorium, according to their trainer and Coach Billy Alumno.

Delarmino faces Ukrainian Vladyslav Mykytas in the men’s elite 57 kgs class quarterfinals while Bade meets Janejira Wankrue in the women’s elite 63.5 kgs quarterfinal round.

Jiu-jitsu champion Annie Ramirez also begins her World Games bid on Saturday when she squares off with Frenchwoman Fouillat Laurence and American Matan Ashley in women’s 57 kgs Ne-Waza event.

Kim Mangrobang, a double old winner in last May’s Vietnam SEA Games—will plunge into action on Sunday in women’s duathlon, the same day her fellow SEA Games triathlon gold medalist Fernando Casares and John Chicano compete in the men’s contest at the Railroad Park in Birmingham.

Junna Tsukii won gold in women’s karate for the country’s medal so far in the games.

TIGER WOODS will try to avoid leaving early from St. Andrews for the second straight time, while Cameron Young will try to hang tough after a firstround 68. AP

RUBILEN AMIT survives a scare from her German opponent.

Jack of all trades Pidcock wins Alpe d’Huez stage

A

LPE D’HUEZ, France—In his first Tour de France, 22-yearold Tom Pidcock became the youngest winner of a stage on the iconic Alpe d’Huez mountain after crossing the line solo at the ski resort on Thursday, when Jonas Vingegaard kept the overall lead.

The mountain bike Olympic champion from Britain attacked on the ascent, and his frenetic pace up the legendary 21 hairpin bends was too fast for his breakaway companions.

“That was certainly one of my best experiences in cycling,” said Pidcock, a jack of all trades who also owns a cyclocross world title. “It’s unreal when you’re literally slaloming through people’s flags, fists and God knows what else. You can’t experience that anywhere else other than the Alpe d’Huez in the Tour de France.”

For his first day in the yellow jersey, Vingegaard finished three minutes and 23 seconds behind Pidcock to keep his overall lead intact. The Jumbo-Visma team leader was in a group including defending champion Tadej Pogacar and 2018 Tour winner Geraint Thomas.

Pogacar, who cracked on Thursday in the first big Alpine stage, tested his rival twice in the last 3 kilometers but Vingegaard responded with ease.

Vingegaard leads Pogacar by two minutes and 22 seconds, with Thomas third, 2:26 off the pace.

Pidcock and four-time champion Chris Froome had joined forces earlier in the day in the downhill of the Col du Galibier to catch the breakaway.

The daunting 165-kilometer (102.5mile) Stage 12 from Briancon featured three tough climbs so difficult

that they are classified as “beyond category”—the Col du Galibier, the Col de La Croix de Fer and the climb to Alpe d’Huez.

At the foot of the final climb, the five remaining breakaway riders— Louis Meintjes, Froome, Pidcock, Neilson Powless and Giulio Ciccone— had a lead of more than six minutes on the group including all the main contenders.

Amid the sound of cowbells and flares lit by some of the hundreds of thousands of fans lining the road, Pidcock accelerated with 10.5-kilometer left as he dropped Powless and Ciccone.

Meintjes and Froome stayed in contention a bit longer but Pidcock attacked again to dash Froome’s hopes of claiming a first win since the crash that nearly ended his career three years ago.

Pidcok beat the record of Colombia’s Lucho Herrera, who was 23 when he won on Alpe d’Huez in 1984.

Meintjes was second at the top, 48 seconds behind, and Froome completed the stage podium.

“I gave it everything I had. No regrets,” Froome said.

Vingegaard took control of the race on Thursday at the end of an epic day of cycling that knocked Pogacar off his pedestal. After spending the day harassing the two-time champion with relentless attacks, Vingegaard finally dropped his Slovenian rival in the last climb of Stage 11.

Thursday’s battle between the main contenders was less spectacular.

Jumbo-Visma riders rode at the front of the yellow jersey group in the final climb, setting the tempo and preventing attacks from Vingegaard’s rivals, except Pogacar’s moves.

On a disappointing Bastille day for French riders, Romain Bardet was dropped on the final climb and slipped to fourth overall, 2:35 off the pace. AP

Navarro, Ravena key PHL’s rout of hapless India

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ILLIAM NAVARRO and Thirdy Ravena were the men of the hour as the Philippines overpowered India, 10159, on Friday in the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Asia Cup at the Istoria Stadium in Jakarta.

Navarro scored 18 points on 6 of 7 shooting while Ravena, recovered from a bad fall in the team’s previous game, went 7 of 8 for 17 points in addition to five rebounds and two steals for Gilas Pilipinas who bounced back from an 80-95 loss to Lebanon two nights ago.

The Philippines is now 1-1 wonlost in Group D. “It’s an important game for us and we needed this win,” Serbian-

New Zealander Coach Nenad Vucinic said. “We were disappointed with our performance in our first game [against Lebanon].”

“Congratulations to everyone for stepping up,” he said. “Our defense earlier is huge as it forces India to turnovers.”

Bobby Ray Parks Jr. made 12 points, Rhenz Abando had 10 points and 6-foot-7 Carl Tamayo contributed nine points for Team Philippines. Sixfoot-8 Kevin Quiambao dished out nine assists and posted six points.

Abando sank a triple as Gilas stretched their lead to 95-53 with still three minutes left.

But it was Ravena who led the

Philippines’s furious attack in the opening quarter, also nailing a buzzer-beating basket for a 20-13 Philippine lead.

Ravena sustained his game in the second period by unloading eight of Gilas’ 10 points for a 30-20 advantage.

Muin Bek Hafeez led India with 14 points.

Gilas will play next the New Zealand Tall Blacks on Sunday at 9 p.m.

It was a sigh of relief for Gilas as it would automatically move to the next round regardless of the result of their game against the Kiwis.

India suffered back-to-back defeats to fall out of contention for the next round. Josef Ramos

STAGE winner Britain’s Thomas Pidcock climbs Alpe D’Huez during Stage 12 on Thursday. AP

T. ANDREWS, Scotland—The Old Course was never faster.

The pace of play was never slower.

The celebrated start Thursday of the 150th British Open gave way to Cameron Young making his debut with an eight-under 64 for a two-shot lead over Rory McIlroy, and Tiger Woods making what could be his last competitive appearance at St. Andrews a short one.

His score would indicate as much.

Woods began his round by hitting out of a divot into the Swilcan Burn for a double bogey. He ended it by taking three putts through the Valley of Sin for a par and a 78, his second-worst score in his Open career.

Woods will try to avoid leaving early from St. Andrews for the second straight time.

“Looks like I’m going to have to shoot 66 tomorrow to have a chance,” Woods said. “Guys did it today. And that’s my responsibility tomorrow is to go ahead and do it—need to do it.”

Young and McIlroy didn’t have to contend with as much wind in the morning, though St. Andrews has seen far stronger gusts over its centuries of golf. Throw in the humps and mounds and difficult pin positions, and the Old Course held its own.

“It’s the fiddliest Open that I’ve played. It’s the only way I can really describe it,” McIlroy said. “OK, the 18th at Carnoustie was like a runway, that fairway. But around the greens here and just all the slopes and undulations and everything, I think as the tournament progresses, you’re going to get some funny bounces and it’s going to test your patience at times.”

Nothing tested the patience like the constant waiting. By late afternoon, the rounds were taking just over six hours. They waited on the tee and in the fairway, and it didn’t help with so many players looking for the best angles to tight pins and playing to the left into other fairways.

“It’s the way the golf course is set up. It’s how firm it is,” US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick said after his 72. “The way the golf course is designed...to get better angles and better lines, you’ve got to hit across all the fairways. There’s nothing you can do unfortunately about it. It’s just sad more than anything. It’s just ridiculous.”

Good scores were available, and 54 players broke par, 26 of them with rounds in the 60s.

Young was a surprise leader only because it’s his first time competing on an Open links. He has had one of the better rookie seasons on the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Tour, and the 25-year-old New Yorker is not the least bit daunted by the stage. Just two months ago, he contended into the final hour of the PGA Championship until finishing one shot out of a playoff.

Young played smartly and took advantage of the birdie chances. He reached seven under through 12 holes with the wind helping on the inward nine. He missed two good chances, finished with a birdie and most importantly kept bogeys off his card.

“I don’t think that I played a perfect round of golf,” Young said.

“I scored really well. And I think we

Road Warriors trounce Bossing to squeeze out of 3-game skid

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LEX routed Blackwater, 98-68, on Friday to halt a three-game skid in the Philippine Basketball Association Philippine Cup at the Ynares Sports Center in Antipolo City.

The Road Warriors—behind Don Trollano, Calvin Oftana, Jay-R Quiñahan and Justin Chua—dropped a 31-2 bomb on the Bossing and never looked back to improve to 5-5 wonlost for seventh place.

“Our first group did a pretty good job, and everyone knows that our season was on the line in this game,” said Trollano, who finished with 16 points.

“There were games in the past that we

thought our way around the way you have to out there.”

Young figures he knows only a fraction of the secrets to Old Course— no one ever really figures it all out with so many conditions on the ground and in the air—and there was one occasion on the par-5 fifth when he looked at his note in the yardage book: “Hard left is better than right.” He went left and made birdie.

“We did stuff like that a few times today,” Young said.

Players Championship winner Cameron Smith and English qualifier Robert Dinwiddie each had a 67.

Dinwiddie had the best score of the afternoon, when the wind was at its strongest. The large group at 66 included Masters champion Scottie Scheffler, Dustin Johnson and even Barclay Brown, the English amateur who plays at Stanford.

Xander Schauffele, coming off his second straight win last week, was in the group a 69.

Scheffler tried to explain just how fast the links were playing by suggesting the ball was rolling faster on the fairways than on the greens.

Than he realized that actually was the case. It gets that way at St. Andrews when the ground is crispy and the Open comes to the gray, old town.

“They are? I’m glad I’m not losing my mind,” Scheffler said.

McIlroy looked free as ever at St. Andrews, his first time back for the Open since 2010. His game is in good shape and he piled up five birdies through 12 holes, with only one careless play that led to his lone bogey on the 13th.

“Fantastic start. Just what you hope will happen when you’re starting off your week,” McIlroy said.

“I did everything that you’re supposed to do around St. Andrews.”

Then again, good starts are nothing new this year. He led the PGA Championship after 18 holes and was one shot behind after the first round of the US Open. Both times, he couldn’t hold it together until he had fallen too far behind to catch up.

“I need to go out tomorrow and back up what I just did today,” he said.

Defending champion Collin Morikawa struggled with his putting and had a 72. Morikawa knew how long of a day he was in for when there was a group on the fifth tee, and the group ahead was just starting to walk toward the fairway.

“Xander and I talked about it.

We’re watching more golf than we ever have,” said Morikawa, referring to how both rarely watch on TV. “You stay in the fairway and you’re watching two other groups play golf.”

It was hard to watch Woods at times. He was 6 over through seven holes, missing more putts than usual and missing left off the tee.

His tee shot on No. 7 was so far left that it wound up in a bunker in the 12th fairway, leading to another double bogey.

There were consecutive birdies around the turn, but little else to celebrate.

Woods had pointed to this week even as his shattered right leg from a February 2021 car crash kept him from playing. The Open probably won’t return to St. Andrews for another five years, and the 46-yearold Woods can’t help but wonder if he’ll be playing at a high level by then.

“This was always on the calendar to hopefully be well enough to play it.

And I am,” he said. “And just didn’t do a very good job of it.” AP

had a big advantage, but we still lost.

Those were lessons for us.”

NLEX posted its biggest lead 8746 early in the fourth quarter.

Oftana scattered 15 points and grabbed eight rebounds while Quiñahan added 12 points. Chua missed a double-double with 11 points and nine rebounds, while playmaker Kris Rosales contributed eight rebounds for the Road Warriors.

“It’s really our defense that carried

us in this game. If our defense is fantastic, our offense will surely follow,” NLEX Coach Yang Guiao said. “And that’s exactly the story of the game.”

No Bossing was able to score in double digits as the team struggled with a 14 of 49 shooting from and went 10 of 25 from beyond the three-point zone.

Center-forward Yousef Taha, who stopped the bleeding with a basket at the 7:50 mark of the first quarter, had nine points and nine rebounds to lead the Bossing, who suffered their third straight defeat to drop to 5-4.

They are now forced to win their remaining games—against Converge on Wednesday and Magnolia on July 22—to make it to the eight-team quarterfinals. Josef Ramos