Japan execs visit PC project recipient in Leyte

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines – Japanese Embassy officials last Tuesday arrived in this city and visited one of the 775 public high school-recipients in Luzon and the Visayas of the P320-million Phase 4 of the Personal Computers for Public Schools (PCPS) project.

Hiroshi Yamakawa, 2nd secretary on Economic Section and Kenji Hirai, press officer of the Japan Information and Culture Center, led Embassy personnel’s visit to the Cirilo Roy Montejo National High School (CRMNHS) that was provided with desktop computers by the Japanese government under the PCPS project.

Inside the school’s computer laboratory, DTI-Leyte provincial director Desiderio Belas, Jr. informed the Japanese officials that the province’s recipient schools reached 145 of a total of 339 divided among Biliran, Southern Leyte, Leyte, Samar, Eastern Samar, Northern Samar provinces in Eastern Visayas.

“This project, financed by the government of Japan’s Non-Project Grant Aid- Counter Value Fund, had already distributed a total of 60,300 PCs since 2001 (through Phase 1 to 4),” said Belas, while assuring the Japanese officials that the PCs will be used by students only.

CRMNHS principal Valeria Gabriel told The FREEMAN: “We assigned one teacher, Jerry Tismo, to be the ICT coordinator. No unit is allowed to be take outside the lab.”

In her message of gratitude, Gabriel told the Japanese officials that the presence of computers in their school increased the number of enrollees. “There is already a long list of incoming students, and I believed that computers were the motivating factors,” she said. - THE FREEMAN