More than 5K jobs available in 2-day tourism job fairs: DOLE

Job seekers, especially those looking for opportunities in the tourism sector, may participate in the second special simultaneous job fairs that will run from Thursday to Friday in Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said Wednesday.

ment (BLE) said more than 5,000 jobs would be made available at the “2nd Trabaho Turismo Asenso Philippine Tourism Job Fairs” to be held in different malls in Pampanga (Central Luzon), Iloilo City (Western Visayas), and Cagayan de Oro City (Northern Mindanao).

said BLE director Patrick Patriwirawan.

The venues for the event are Robinson’s Starmills in San Fernando City, Pampanga; Robinson’s Iloilo in Iloilo City; and Limketkai Mall in Cagayan de Oro City.

“Of the 194 recently approved flagship projects by the NEDA Board, 45 will be financed through collaboration with the FMARCOS, P10 FMORE, P10

In a social media post, the DOLE - Bureau of Local Employ-

“The estimated number of vacancies solicited is at 5,686,”

The available employment includes those in the hotel indus-

An erstwhile volunteer in the Spanish-American War in Cuba before going to the coun-try, Edward E. Christensen, an American planter in Davao during the prewar period, is re-membered for his early success in homesteading in Padada, Davao del Sur, where his 3,000-hectare coconut plantation bearing his name was situated.

Despite managing both his farm and the adjacent Mindanao Estates Plantation principal-ly owned by Paul Gulick and Burdett Crumb, Christensen earned more from cultivating his homestead, which gave him an annual return of $2,300, the equivalent of P4,600. A home-stead in Davao at the time consisted of 24 hectares and was planted with about 2,400 coco-nuts.

To be productive, an average of one hundred trees per hectare is taken as an av-

ANTONIO V. FIGUEROA FAST BACKWARD

Christensen And Homestead

erage, with about four trees yielding a picul of dry copra valued at $4, giving the owner an annual cropping yield of $100 per hectare, a conservative estimate. On top of this, Christensen also got extra income from raising chickens, catch-crops, cattle, and other farm produce, making his earnings from copra the figured net.

In 1928, in an interview, Christensen lamented ‘that the old days are gone and that now-adays the job of getting a good homestead under cultivation is not to be successfully tackled by the young man without capital.’ His talk was published by The American Chamber of Com-merce Journal in its July 1928 issue (‘The Mindanao Problem: Plantations The Solution.’), stat-ing:

“Say he has 3,000 capital, P6,000. Christensen divides this sum into three, $1,000 for fixed expenses, $1,000 for living expenses, $1,000 for planting. The whole farm cannot be put un-der cultivation with this amount, but perhaps ten hectares may be, in a period of two years; and after ten years, the 1,000 coconuts in these ten hectares should be yielding an annual in-come of $2,000 net. It is seen that the capital of $3,000 is exhausted at the end of two years; the homesteader may contrive by one means or another to eke out a livelihood until his 1,000 coconuts begin bearing profitably, but he cannot put another hectare under cultivation. Without a farm loan, ten hectares are the very best a single man can do with a capital of $3,000. If married, he must not try to start with less than $5,000 or $6,000, and $10,000 is much safer.”

Christensen was optimistic that if homesteaders are given mortgage loans (which were not available in Davao at the time) to fund the cultivation of their farms, they will succeed. He did not recommend homesteading for single men because it “is lonely and uninviting,” and “is best left to the native farmer.” If a loan could be taken, he advised an interested per-son to face the hazard of homesteading because “the risks and hardships outweigh the possi-ble returns.”

Summarizing the Christensen interview, the journal continues:

“Instead of homesteading, Christensen recommends plantation corporations taking up their lawful allotment of ,1024 hectares of land, or something less, and financed by a capital of not less than P 100,000, $50,000. This method eliminates the loneliness and hardships, and judicious utilization of the capital will