Bacolod group asks PNoy: Return info-com tech body

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines — The city's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) stakeholders are appealing to President Benigno Aquino III to reinstate the Commission on ICT (CICT) which he renamed as ICT Office through Executive Order No. 47 last June 23.

The Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for ICT (BNeFIT), in a statement released yesterday, said, "We believe in reinstating the CICT as a cabinet-level agency that serves as the most visible, efficient and effective government ICT champion that has served an enabler and catalyst of all the ICT stakeholders."

BNeFIT chairperson Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, who also chairs the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines (NICP), said they are joining other ICT councils like the Cebu Educational Foundation for Information Technology (CED-FIT) and ICT Davao, Inc. which have earlier aired their appeals to Aquino.

The BNeFIT statement, signed by 19 members representing academe, public and private sectors, and local government units, said: "We hereby declare July 22, 2011 as day of mourning for the CICT, and will conduct a short ceremony to voice out appeal for the restoration of CICT as one community."

BNeFIT, CED-FIT, and IT Davao are among the 35 ICT council-members of the NICP, a national network of all ICT councils created to serve as the recognized and unifying advocate for countrywide ICT industry development.

Their goals are to promote foreign and local investments and balanced development, share information and best practices, and transform the Philippines into a competitive provider for global services, Batapa-Sigue said.

Besides renaming the CICT to ICTO, Aquino has also transferred it from the Office of the President to the Department of Science and Technology under Secretary Mario Montejo, and abolished the positions of the CICT chairman and the commissioners. 

ICTO will be headed by an executive director with the rank of undersecretary, but it was not known yet who will be named by the president. It was Ivan John Uy who was the chairman of the CICT last year.

Batapa-Sigue said BNeFIT was created in 2008 to pursue ICT- readiness and competitiveness and to further push and sustain the gains of Bacolod City and Negros Occidental as part of the Philippine Cyber Corridor.

"We accepted the challenge posed by the CICT as the Philippines targets to capture 10 percent of the world's outsourcing market equivalent to $13 billion revenues and one million employment by 2010 through public-private sector initiatives under the Philippine Roadmap 2010," the statement read.

With the aim of achieving 10,000 jobs by 2010, BNeFIT was supported by CICT to undertake various projects, it said, adding that for Bacolod and Negros Occidental almost 10,000 direct jobs and 30,000 indirect jobs were created this year, translating to more than P100 million in monthly salary and almost $10 million worth of foreign investments."

BNeFIT said it also joins the call of all the ICT stakeholders in the country to create a Department of ICT that is expected to have the singular mandate of utilizing ICT as a tool for nation-building. (FREEMAN)