By Riza Recio
03/13/2008 [ tribune.net.ph ]
The planting of jathropa, which the government is promoting as a biofuel feedstock, has been jumpstarted in Eastern Visayas, PNOC-Alternative Fuels Corp. (PNOC-AFC) chairman Renato Velasco said.
He commended the people of Basey, Samar for their collective efforts to initiate the planting of jatropha.
“Eastern Visayas is known as the hotbed of the communist insurgency in the Visayas at the height of anti-Marcos movement. In this time of peace, we want the image of planting the seeds of revolution to be replaced with planting the seeds of change — through jatropha,” Velasco added.
Velasco visited the municipality of Basey to grace the First General Assembly of The Baktas Kabub’wason Association, an organization of Basaynons pushing for jatropha cultivation.
Velasco said the group in Basey is one of the most organized in the Visayas. Fifty barangays of the municipality are now jatropha planters. The association has a management group headed by Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, the commanding officer of the 62nd Infantry Battalion based in Basey, Samar.
“Basey now has some 71,424 shrubs planted in a 28,000-hectare distributed in 32 out of its 51 barangays. Of these, it is Barangay Villa Aurora that tops both in the number of tuba-tuba planted and in hectarage,” Teodorico Porbus, Baktas president, said.
