NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo For 17 days, I travelled with 20 people from 14 different countries to five different states in America as part of the US Department of State’s International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP). The first time I met them — we were at the lobby of DC Churchill...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo Under the administration of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar noted that the agency has built a total of 3,945 km of roads. DPWH has widened 1,908 km of roads, built 328 kilometer of bypasses and diversion...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo According to the World Risk Report, inadequate and inefficient infrastructure and weak logistic networks significantly increase the risk for an extreme natural hazard to backslide into a disaster. Philippines lies along the Pacific Typhoon Belt and is within the...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo On September 3, I met 20 people from 14 different countries at the lobby of DC Churchill Hotel — a 112-year-old historic infrastructure which has come to be a landmark on Connecticut Avenue in Waswhington, DC. Apart from the 50-year elevator, the eight-story...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo Last week, I was invited to speak and award the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines-Calabarzon Regional Awardees. I could still remember how a few years back, we found ourselves sitting at the same chair, anxiously waiting for our name to be...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo Out of the 171 countries assessed in the 2016 World Risk Report, the Philippines ranked 3rd most exposed to natural hazards. According to PAGASA, the Philippines is visited by at least 20 tropical cyclones every year. Just last week, heavy rains brought about by...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported a year-on-year increase of 468,000 jobs generated in the construction sector based on a Labor Force Survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority in April, 2018. DOLE Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo When I was in high school, I watched “The Bucketlist” with two of my closest friends — Karen Jumarang and Chynna Cuna. It was a film staring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman about two terminally ill men on a road trip with a list of things to do before they...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo It was a Wednesday afternoon and we were about to discuss a case study on Ronald MacLean Abaroa — the first democratically elected mayor of La Paz in four decades. This was at a time when Bolivia was considered the poorest nation in South America and was suffering...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo It was a Wednesday afternoon and our professor — Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jamil Mahuad asked us to sit as his cabinet members and navigate through the crisis of Ecuador in the year of 1998 – at the time when he was elected president. For eight hours, we learned...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo Few years back, as my travel to Mindanao became more frequent with the construction of the Mindanao Road Network Development, a 2,567-km road network in Northern Mindanao, Davao, SOCCSKSARGEN, and CARAGA Regions, I have developed a more nuanced view of Islam and...
NIGHT OWL Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo For years, Filipinos are reminded of the deteriorating state of Philippine infrastructure — from economic losses causing 3.5 billion a day due to traffic congestion to the increase in road usage every year. Estimates by the Japan International Cooperation Agency...
