As the seat of governance, the Provincial Capitol is the microcosm of the province, our beloved Pangasinan.

The degree of passion that I have invested in this particular project has also been manifested in the transformation of other offices in the capitol complex.

The same transformation is happening in our agricultural field stations, in all our provincial, district and community hospitals, and in other areas where there are provincial government facilities.

We want to erase the notion that, if it is a government project, it is going to be a lousy job -- an inferior project. It is our desire to raise the level of standard for government projects.

We want our beloved constituents to be proud of what we have done and continue to do so because they, too, share in the glory and the pride of having a remarkable performance.

Today, I am deeply honored to report to you the extent and the dimension of renovation works that we have completed on most of the buildings inside the capitol complex.

We have the Finance Building and its Annex which house the Accounting office, Budget office, Commission on Audit, Provincial Assessors office and Treasurer’s office.

The ENRO Building has the Environment and Natural Resources Office Building and Liaison offices of the Provincial Agriculturist and the Provincial Veterinarian.

The Kalantiao Building has the Provincial Employment and Services Office, Human Resource Management Office, Provincial Health Office and Provincial Population Office.

Still on-going are the Library Building, Civil Service Building and the Malong Building

All this that we did are not only meant for the sake of beauty and good looks, but as a no-nonsense endeavor for meaningful governance.

nlike before, offices that have inter-related functions are now clustered to serve our constituents systematically, expeditiously and conveniently.

Well-Motivated and Efficient Employees

The transformation of the physical infrastructure goes hand-in-hand with the transformation of the human infrastructure of the provincial government.

From day one at the Capitol, I spent a lot of time discussing with every department head on how each of them run their departments and offices. I also held numerous meetings with key staff of the Agriculture office, chiefs of hospitals and staff of the Provincial health office, which I followed up with regular weekly meetings in the same level of tenacity to drive home the point that managing for results is a cohesive partnership among all of us in the name of what we call “public service.”

Several strategic meetings were also held inside the capitol complex, in my house in Baguio and even in my farm in Bugallon.

From those meetings, we were able to get to know each other, as we ironed out the various issues and concerns of different departments, charted strategic directions and mapped out action plans.

What I did with the department heads were echoed and expanded by them with their respective employees.

During flag ceremonies, we keep on imparting to the employees the virtue of professionalism.

We now have a code of conduct for all the employees.

I am more than certain that today, our provincial employees have learned that their duties and responsibilities should not duplicate those of the municipal government employees.

The provincial government has the strategic role to oversee the 47 cities and municipalities, that is why they are duty-bound to do their best and be the role models in delivering the basic services to the people..

Very soon, we will have six air-con shuttle buses to bring our provincial government employees to and from their offices and points of origin to inspire them to work on time.

Mga kababayan ko, gusto sana naming baguhin ang sinasabi ng mga tao sa ating mga kawani: “empleyado ba yan? Tignan mo nga ang hitsura?” Ang gusto naming marinig na sasabihin sa ating mga kawani ay: “Yan ang tunay na lingkod bayan!”

We are not completely there yet, ladies and gentlemen. But we are on our way, and we are on the right track.

The negative perception of a government employee nationwide is deep-seated and we need a lot of effort to reverse that viewpoint.

Lamentably, we inherited a provincial government marred by a culture of neglect and disorder, and so we had to undergo this tedious process, this herculean task of transforming physical and human infrastructures before we can fully shift to a higher gear in implementing the 10 Major Development Thrusts of this administration.

But no matter how big the challenges are, we are proud to say that we hurdled with audacity the nuances in our first year of governance.

We can now report to you the basic things that we have done in our journey to fulfill our vision.

Safe and Peaceful Neighborhood

As chairman of the Provincial Peace and Order Council, I have sustained – and continue to sustain -- our tough anti-cattle rustling campaign. We have here a drastic drop, if not total elimination, of cattle rustling activities in Pangasinan. In fact we recovered P1 million worth of stolen cows and carabaos.

We have consistently intensified our effort to fight insurgency that practically splintered the ranks of the dissident movement.

As the newly-elected chairman of the Regional Peace and Order Council, I have been given a bigger role to play and I would like to integrate efforts of all leaders, police enforcers and military personnel to ensure an environment of peace and security for the Ilocanos and the Pangasinenses in Region I.

Since I believe that prison cells are intended to reform criminals and law breakers, we renovated and improved the Provincial Jail to provide a more humane environment for the inmates who are awaiting disposition of their cases.

Quality and Affordable Health Care

The provincial government is giving a high premium on health care services. And we have embarked on a two-tiered optimum approach to benefit our indigent patients.

While we insured them in the Philhealth program to avail of medical services, we are upgrading our 14 hospitals to be at par with private hospitals.

Already, we have enrolled a total of 26,005 heads of indigent families from the 4 th and 5 th class municipalities in the Phihealth program with a total health premium of P4.8 million paid for by the provincial government.

Of these families, 2,644 Philhealth card-bearing patients were admitted in our various government hospitals.

We are now processing 50,000 health cards for heads of families in the 1 st, 2 nd and 3 rd class municipalities and 3 cities of Pangasinan.

The renewal of expired health cards of some 8,083 indigents from the 4 th and 5 th class municipalities is also under process.

This means that we have a total of 84,088 health card bearing families who can avail anytime of the hospitalization and other medical services benefits under the program.

This will be the first time in the history of Pangasinan that we are taking steps towards a universal enrollment of all indigent heads of families, regardless of political persuasion and party affiliation.

I believe that attending to health care needs of the poor should not be tainted with political color.

Simultaneously, we are currently undertaking construction and renovation works in all of the 14 government hospitals according to their distinct requirements. These are being reinforced by significant improvements in cleanliness, orderliness and work attitude of hospital staff.

Already, we have received many feedbacks from patients, manifesting their satisfaction with our hospital services. But we still hope to attain our dream of making our government hospitals the standard of excellence in Pangasinan.

Soon, the Pangasinan Provincial Hospital will have a Dialysis Center equipped with 12 dialysis machines.

We also want that during this period, all community hospitals will be upgraded from 10 to 15-bed capacity to 25-bed capacity, complete with brand new generators. Hopefully, ECG Machines, blood chemistry analyzer and other basic hospital equipment will be installed in these facilities.

And as a standard norm of service in all the public hospitals, there will be Maternal and fully-airconditioned Newborn Care Unit plus, additional equipment that include: Fetal Doppler, Pulse oxymeter and ultrasound machines.

We go by the dictum that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

On top of these, we intend to establish a child protection center for our abused children and a place for battered women.

Because they cannot afford expensive health care services in private hospitals and clinics, we want to give extra attention and utmost health care services to the poor and the powerless.

In fact, we have established a centralized procurement system of medicines and medical supplies, called Botika ng Probinsiya, to ensure availability of affordable, safe and good quality drugs.

Because we sell cheaper drugs than private hospitals, there is no logical reason that private drug stores would mushroom in any of our hospitals.

As part of our health care program concerning reproductive health, we are giving parents the freedom of choice to lessen maternal and infant mortality rates.

Couples should have the option to choose between the medical (artificial) and natural family planning methods depending on their religious beliefs and conviction.

We would like to urge as well as empower couples and exercise their right to choose the number of children, while taking into consideration their capability to provide the proper nutrition and health care of their children.

tarting this month, I have tasked both the Provincial Health Office and the Provincial Population Office to team up in the massive promotion of both natural and medical methods.

After suffering from a long time of neglect, we have refocused our priorities to give impetus on the plight of agriculture which is still the province’s primary industry.

To provide long-term solutions to our agricultural inadequacies, we have started upgrading the satellite offices and agriculture farms of the provincial government to regain leadership in the industry. Our farmers have to learn and acquire the latest technology to increase farm production.

Despite the rice supply disturbances in the country, Pangasinan posted a sufficiency level of 152 percent. For the period July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, palay production reached 1,057,117 metric tons harvested from 233,814 hectares.

We now have a productivity standing at 4.52 metric tons per hectare, or 90 cavans per hectare. This translates to 21,142,329 cavans of rice produced for the period.

Corn yield this year reached 249,974 metric tons harvested from 43,089 hectares. At 5.6 metric tons per hectare, corn production today is higher than the 2006 level at 5.3 metric tons per hectare.

We have started simultaneous upgrade and repair of our seven agriculture demo stations. Our seven stations are now being reinvigorated with new agri-aqua marine technology to bolster the enthusiasm of our farming and fishing communities.

Specifically, our stations in Sta. Barbara, San Quintin, Dasol and Mangatarem are being transformed as sites for the production of vegetable gardens, hatcheries for tilapia and hito and livestock for superior breed of cattles, hogs and goats. The San Quintin station is now 90 percent complete.

In the meantime, our station in Libsong, Lingayen is concentrated as hatchery center for tilapia and hito.

Our station in Arnedo, Bolinao is a twin undertaking for mangrove production and propagation of high-value fish varieties.

Our satellite office in Alaminos , along with the extension offices of the provincial agriculturist and provincial veterinarian sees to it that the needs of our constituents in Western Pangasinan are efficiently served.

Finally, our station in Natividad is being renovated as demo station for livestock. Some of our livestock service areas are now conducting artificial inseminations.

All our agricultural specimens are offered to farmers and fisherfolk, especially those with backyard farms, at much cheaper costs to strengthen our efforts towards a sustainable self-reliance program.

We also have a Coastal Resource Management (CRM) Center for aqua-marine research located near the Libsong Fish Farm.

Our approach to high-quality education is, to say the least, innovative.

We are now in the final stage of producing 30 Teacher Guidebooks for English, Science and Math subjects for both elementary and secondary levels.

We gathered some 50 of the best minds from both DepEd Pangasinan Division 1 and Pangasinan Division 2 who prepared and developed these guidebooks that will serve as a user-friendly manual for all public school teachers.

Considered as the first such undertaking in the country, the guidebooks will be formally introduced this September.

Corollary to this, we assisted the DepEd in producing diagnostic test materials to determine the weak and strong points of students and pupils in all public elementary and high schools.

fter the devastation of Typhoon “Cosme” the worst typhoon to ever hit the province, the provincial government expeditiously extended support to hard hit towns and barangays for the immediate repair of partially damaged school buildings in time for the school opening.

Based on statistics, Pangasinan has the highest unemployment rate of 13 percent in Region 1.

To cushion the impact of this increasing number of unemployment, the provincial government, through its PESO, revitalized the manpower development and employment program and, in just a year, from July 2007 to June 2008, a total of 1,303 job applicants were successfully placed within the period.

This is a big increase from the previous record of 569 placements for the period July 2006 to June 2007.

Out of 1,303 successful applicants, 155 were deployed abroad, while the remaining 1,101 were placed in big companies in special economic zones.

Pangasinan PESO, adjudged the best PESO in Region I, has also facilitated training of 1,226 job applicants, 540 of which were already hired.

It has further exerted effort to assure the safety of OFW’s by conducting anti-illegal recruitment seminars which benefited some 435 overseas job applicants and created a one-stop-shop center to expedite processing of documents of OFW’s and their dependents.

PESO has also came up with a Provincial Livelihood Program, GAD Program Partnership with Land bank granting livelihood loans to some 28 organized groups.

I have said before that the Capitol Building and the capitol environs including the beach will become the centerpiece of tourism in Pangasinan.

But many doubted my statement because they could see then that everything was in disarray at the Capitol.

After we have leveled and cleaned the Lingayen beachfront, renovated the walkways and buildings within the Capitol Complex – the doubting Thomases have realized that indeed, the capitol complex has the immense potential of a tourism landmark.

The refurbished Capitol Resort Hotel, which can now rival any hotel and resort in Pangasinan and elsewhere, is a tourist attraction by itself.

With the massive facelift we have mounted on our physical assets, even our field offices and our hospitals will soon become tourist destinations.

As we go along with these transformations, we have encouraged our students and teachers, barangay and municipal officials and constituents to go on educational tours and see for themselves the big difference at the capital grounds.

We have purchased tourist-friendly six buses to ferry them on their Lakbay-Aral. If you add up our six buses for our employees and you will see 12 of our buses rolling along the highways in Pangasinan.

I believe that the success of tourism starts with the local folkdom giving impetus of the program.

The buses will also be used to bring us to other Pangasinan tourists’ destinations which we will also refurbish to become tourist-friendly.

It is my policy that we start promoting tourism first among us Pangasinenses.

With a 2.6 million population, Pangasinan alone is a big market for tourism.

We will continue to promote the best products of Pangasinan which we started during the celebration of Pangasinan Pistay Dayat when we had our first Pangasinan Trade and Tourism Expo.

Next year, we will launch an aggressive tourism promotions and marketing program to lure tourists, both domestic and international.

To alleviate the plight of 12,000 informal settlers occupying danger areas, government land and public places in Pangasinan, we have conducted inventory of lands suitable for socialized-low cost housing development and we identified about 120 hectares in 20 areas throughout the province as possible sites for this grand socialized housing projects.

This could translate to 8,750 new and decent housing units.

In coordination with the Housing & Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB)`, we can tap 50 existing socialized housing projects in the province from where we could dispose a total of 4,920 housing units to qualified beneficiaries.

We have started on March this year the preliminary development work of the 10-hectare lot which will be used for the “Abong Tayo Eletneg Program (ATEP), a local housing initiative in partnership with Gawad Kalinga (GK) which can accommodate 600 dwelling units.

Five (5) other potential sites are also being evaluated as additional sites for the proposed GK-ATEP.

We have provided security of tenure to 106 beneficiaries of the Villa Maniboc socialized housing project through the issuance of individual Special patent titles.

Some 39 families who were affected by typhoon Cosme were given technical assistance to coordinate with Pag-Ibig to grant moratorium on the monthly payment on their houses.

While we are trying to provide units to all the 12,000 informal settlers, we don’t tolerate professional squatters.

We did not budge to the cases filed by professional squatters involving parcels of land owned by the province being claimed by private individuals situated in Brgys. Maniboc and Libsong West.

Of these, three cases were already dismissed while two other cases are still pending in court.

For our Relocation and Resettlement Program we have the Lingayen Gulf Resettlement Project located in Brgy. Pangapisan Norte also in Lingayen where we have completed the 13-hectare site development with 600 home lots occupied by some 639 families.

We have assisted the relocation of 15 informal settlers occupying the area beside the Provincial Motorpool to the resettlement site and we continuously accommodate informal settlers on case to case basis.

We will repair and upgrade the sprawling Narciso Ramos Sports and Civic Center (NRSCC) not only to provide modern sports facilities for our local athletes, but also to attract sports tourism.

This year, we hosted the week-long Ilocos Region Athletic Association which gathered 6,000 delegates regionwide. Days before that we also hosted the 3-day State Colleges and Universities Association which generated some 2,000 delegates.

This coming September, we will again host the Milo Olympics with the expected participation of some 5,000 athletes from Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon and the Cordillera Administrative Region.

Typhoon Cosme may have delayed the upgrading of the NRSCC, but we are now doubling our efforts to simultaneously carry out repairs of the damaged facilities .

In the last Pista'y Dayat Celebration, we gave emphasis to youth development. We staged the Sangguniang Kabataan Beach Camp where the participants enjoyed and received a course on environment protection and history of Pangasinan.

To pave our way to progress, we continue to improve our bridges and road network.

In addition, the concreting and asphalting of some 4.28 kilometers of provincial and barangay roads are ongoing.

We have also repaired and rehabilitated a total of 157.80 linear meters of national, provincial and barangay bridges.

We are pushing for three mega infrastructure projects that will catapult Pangasinan to unprecedented economic boom.

These include the proposed commercial airport, international seaport and special eco-tourism zone.

We have already setup a perimeter fence around the old airport of Lingayen and we're now negotiating for the purchase of the 100-meters adjoining lot to extend the runway and meet the standards set by the Air Transportation Office (ATO) for the operation of a commercial airport.

With a commercial airport in place, Pangasinan will become a major tourist and investment destination, accessible to the international market, especially to Asia's fast growing regions such as Southern China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

For our proposed international seaport in Sual, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has already conducted topographic and hydrographic survey with a feasibility study and engineering design being finalized and completed soon. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has already committed P100 million to finance the project.

The groundworks for the 200-hectare proposed site in Lingayen for the first ever special eco-tourism zone of Pangasinan are almost complete. The blueprint for the project is now being prepared for eventual presentation to prospective investors and locators.

Typhoon “Cosme” ignited the passion and indestructible spirit of the people of Pangasinan to unite and undertake a concerted action for massive repair and rehabilitation of damaged properties and facilities.

With 41 persons dead, 187,074 families rendered homeless, 124,309 families with partially and totally damaged houses, a massive power outage, and a total damage to properties reaching P8.8 billion, Typhoon Cosme's fury was unmistakably disastrous.

All major roads of Pangasinan that were made impassable for several hours in the aftermath of Cosme were cleared immediately of debris, fallen trees and downed electrical posts, thus restoring the flow of traffic and the movement of trade and commerce.

Thanks to the combined efforts of the Provincial Police, the WASAR Team, DPWH, the local communities, our Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council and our provincial engineering office.

The hardest hit municipalities and cities were given P200,000 each to rush repair and rehabilitation of partially-damaged school buildings in time for the opening of classes on June 10. We have also given fund support to 465 barangays.

Families of victims were given P10,000 financial assistance each.

As typhoons, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis are getting worse due to climate change, the PDCC is set to purchase state-of-the art gadgets for monitoring devises and search and rescue operations during disaster.

We will also undergo comprehensive community risk disaster management training to involve all cities and municipalities to reduce disaster casualties.

We continued what I started as Congressman of the 2nd District to distribute and plant millions of tree seedlings to schools and barangays through the Green the Mountains Again (GMA) program.

This year alone, we were able to produce some 2 million tree seedlings for the reforestation project.

So far, we have planted 50,000 assorted seedlings in 150 hectares under the program in 75 barangays of 20 municipalities of Pangasinan.

We have also intensified the strict implementation of mining laws which generated a total of P9.6 million as fees for regulated mining and quarrying operations.

Just three days ago, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Lito Atienza deputized me as “Special Environment and Natural Resources Officer” for Pangasinan, thus bolstering our efforts of preserving and protecting the environment.

To us, the deputation order is a tribute to what we have been doing all the years for a balanced ecology.

We now have an autonomous authority on environment concerns in the province and we shall persevere to accomplish the things we have streamlined, especially on reforestation, the regulation of mining and quarrying activities and a more vigorous campaign against all forms of illegal fishing.

When I took over the Capitol, I was facing a huge debt of P600 million of the previous administration. I was left with limited resources to run the affairs of the province of 2.6 million people.

I set good fiscal management to ensure that the limited funds we had can be put to good use, and find ways to increase local revenues.

Various disbursements are always consistent with existing laws and COA rules and regulations.

All financial reports are now updated and submitted to concerned national government agencies on time.

In my first year as your governor , we posted a 47 percent increase in local income, while our expenditures went down by 14 percent.

From July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, our local income rose to P294,312,897 or an increase of P94,933,866 compared with the previous year figure of P199,379,031.

The big chunk of our income came from Real Property Tax in the amount of P197,351,550, which is higher by 89.5% from the previous period with only P104,141,031.

We are happy to note that our Internal Revenue Allotment also went up by 8.31 percent. From July 2007 to June 2008, we received an IRA of P1,285,574,286 which is higher by P98,609,226 versus the year ago figure of P1,186,965,060.

Because of our financial stability, we are not delayed in the remittance of our contributions to GSIS, Pag-Ibig, PhilHealth and BIR. That is why our provincial government employees are not deterred from applying for various kinds of loans.

Last year, and again this year, we were able to issue successive 10% across-the-board increase of the salaries of our employees. And for the first time, we gave our employees a mid-year bonus last July.

Five banking institutions have approached us to offer loans of up to P1 billion. While other local government units have to appeal for loans, banks appeal to us to avail of their loan packages.

While we don’t the immediate need of securing loans, the Land Bank offered us a package that will be very advantageous to the provincial government. The offer is to stave us off from our uncollected IRA which the national government, saddled by financial deficiencies, could only give in trickles for the next five years.

With the package from LandBank, we can get the IRA in full.

With our massive developmental efforts and the ongoing rehabilitation of the damages of Typoon Cosme, we have signed a MOA with Land Bank to avail of this package.

In summary, I can say that we have exerted everything we can to transform our people, our work stations, our buildings and even the lives of our less fortunate constituents.

But at this moment, we can only do so much. In fact, the more we work, the more we see that there is much job to be done yet.

At least in just one year, we have already set some benchmarks on how to execute and accomplish things, especially inside the Capitol Complex.

You can expect that we will not tire in pursuing these standards of excellence for all the other ongoing projects and programs of the provincial government.

As we live in one of the biggest provinces in the country, I need all your support possible for the overall transformation of Pangasinan.

Let us bring back the glory years of Pangasinan. It is about time for us to unite, work closely and reaffirm our love and care for our beloved province.

Significantly, we have started to make big, bold steps in the first year of our journey to fulfill our vision.

However long it will be, if we stay together as one, we will reach our destination faster than we can imagine.