BAGUIO CITY- – Promoting the welfare and their families as key to workplace productivity and improved worker-management relations, the Department of Labor and Employment- Cordillera Administrative Region (DOLE-CAR) conducted a regional summit on Family Welfare last August 27-28 gathering management and employees sector representatives from 25 companies in the region.
“Having a Family Welfare program would create harmonious relationship between the manager and employee. The management will have to look not only on the profit of the company but also on the ten dimensions of the program which will serve as a guide to both labor and management in the implementation of programs and projects with focus on the following: reproductive health/responsible parenthood; education/gender equality; spirituality and values formation; income generation/ livelihood/ cooperative; medical health care; nutrition; environment protection; hygiene and sanitation; sports and leisure and housing and transportation.”
Regional Director Henry John S. Jalbuena stressed this to participants from the hotel and restaurants, educational institutions, retail and wholesale, management services, electric cooperatives, manufacturing, medical services, and agriculture industries in the region.
The Family Welfare Program (FWP) is one of the agency’s strategies of fulfilling the goal of decent work for Filipino workers laid down in President Benigno Aquino III’s Labor and Employment Agenda and the Labor and Employment Plan 2011-2016. It aims to help both management and employees to realize better working relationship by fulfilling the needs of the family of workers and to promote a healthy workplace as a key to business through better quality of the worker’s family.
The FWP is mandatory in establishments employing more than 200 workers. Establishments with less than 200 workers are encouraged to establish or organize a Family Welfare Committee and implement a FWP.
The ten dimensions of FWP contribute to the promotion of plant-level initiatives towards the attainment of the goals of the Philippine Population Management Program (PPMP); instill family planning/ family welfare consciousness among labor and management as a key in promoting workplace productivity and improved worker-management relations.
During the summit, topics discussed were Family Planning and Reproductive Health and HIV/ AIDS in the workplace, Employees Benefits and Rights, National Nutrition Program and Nutrition Friendly Workplaces, Republic Act 9165 also known as the “Dangerous Drugs Act” and Drug Abuse in the Workplace, Sexual Harassment in the workplace, and Violence Against Women and their Children.
The event concluded with the oath taking of newly elected officers of Family Welfare Federation of the Cordillera Region. The new set officers are: Ms. Mj La Madrid of Camp John Hay- Manor as President, Mr. Kenneth Balinggan of Hedcor as Vice President, Ms. Aileen Alafag of BENECO as Secretary, Ms. Elsa Pangilinan as Treasurer, an auditor post will be represented by Mainstream (SM Baguio) and Ms. Eloisa Segarra of Benguet Corporation as Public Relations Officer. The Board of Directors are: Ms. Maricris Padaoan of Benguet Laboratories, Ms. Ann Kimberley Towana of Baguio Country Club, Ms. Lorelie S. Malit of Baguio Central University, Ms. Beverlie Sebes of Tiongsan Harrison Department Store and Supermarket- Harrison, Ms. Judith Adina of University of the Cordilleras, and Mr. Bonifacio Lacea of King Louise farms/ Puyat Farms./DOLE CAR
