“Let’s keep sugar sweet, not only for the planters, but also for the workers, for a healthy sugar industry.”

That came from Senator Miguel Zubiri, who was the keynote speaker at the Stakeholders Conference and Annual General Assembly of the Sugar Industry Foundation Inc. in Bacolod City held yesterday amid the continuing need to provide support services to about 30,000 sugar workers, mill employees and their dependents.

Zubiri said that SIFI has done a wonderful job of providing the heart and soul of the sugar industry and called on his fellow sugar planters to also continue giving donations to SIFI.

“If we don’t take care of our workers, we don’t have production,” he said. 

Zubiri also lauded SIFI for its plan to implement a housing project for sugar workers but he said SIFI needs lots to where they can build these houses and again appealed to sugar planters to donate their lands for the project.

“That is the best the industry can give back to sugar workers,” he said.

Zubiri said that in his home province in Bukidnon, they have helped build almost 3,000 houses for the sugar workers.

“I hope this can also be done in Negros, Iloilo and Cebu,” he said.

SIFI PROGRAMS

In 2007, SIFI expended P31.7 million in total funds for education, health, and entrepreneurship which are under its flagship programs, president and chief operating officer Edith Villanueva said in her report.

She said it released P12 million for high school scholarship grants, college assistanceship, special college scholarship, vocation education, Computer-Assisted Learning and other support activities such as leadership trainings and seminars, on-the-spot poster-making contests and on-the-job trainings that benefited 2,719 scholars and trainees.

SIFI also paid P15.8 million in the annual enrolment fees of sugar workers in the SIFI Advantage Health Plan, a hospitalization plan in partnership with PhilamCare, wherein 87 percent of the cost or 13.78 million is shouldered by the planters or plan holders while the 13 percent or P2.05 million, by SIFI, Villanueva said.

She added a total of P490,000 in loans were released to five cooperatives of sugar workers and marginal sugarcane planters in Luzon and Negros Occidental to start-up income-generating projects. Also, SIFI granted P189,385 in enterprise grant or financial assistance to five organizations in Luzon and Negros Occidental at a maximum of P50,000 each for every organization to purchase equipment, materials or livestock to open or expand an existing enterprise.  

SIFI also spent P660,000 to improve the capacity of sugar worker dependents in various technical skills categories like Reflexology, Building and Wiring, Computer Operation, Food Processing, Rug Making, Baking, Cell Phone Repair, Advance Reflexology, and Cosmetology and Tractor Operation, Villanueva added.*NLG

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