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[av_heading heading=’PEOPLE POWWOW ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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Thursday, November 30, 2017
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THIS WRITER first saw her name in the “top ten” list of passers to this year’s licensure exam for agricultural engineers. The lucky seventh is a 21-year-old lady named Dee B. Lucena, a cum laude from the Central Philippine University (CPU), a native of Caluya, Antique and one of the scholars of Mayor Genevive Gumban Lim-Reyes.
Wow, I said to myself, she is guaranteed a place in the sun. There were only 600 passers out of 1,304 examinees. The other five CPU examinees also passed.
True enough, when I tried to see Dee, a cum laude, she had taken off to Passi City on a self-imposed “mission” to obtain the agricultural city’s production data on sugar cane, pineapple and corn as reference materials for her new-found job.
When I finally got to interview her over lunch at Hotel del Rio, she enthused that no less than her alma mater, CPU, had hired her to teach agriculture subjects at the university’s College of Agriculture.
She had come a long way from home – a sparsely populated Barangay Banago in the isolated island town of Caluya. Masanag, an Ilonggo word for bright, is how she now views her future as agricultural engineer. There are only 9,000 such engineers in the entire Philippines today. Lucky lady; she could not have become one without the help of Mayor Reyes.
“She is always on the lookout for scholars to sponsor,” she said of the mayor who had finished a course in Information Technology at CPU. “She discovered me because I had been a consistent honor student until I graduated valedictorian at Caluya National High School.”
Most of the mayor’s scholars are enrolled at CPU. A cousin of Dee, Cedi Lucena, had also been a scholar and had placed 8th in the licensure exam for social workers.
“It’s really a privilege that literally spared our parents from worrying,” Dee revealed. “In my case, I was receiving a monthly allowance of three thousand pesos for five straight years. The mayor would occasionally gather us for a consultative meeting.”
Dee is second of three children born to Eddie Lucena, a municipal government employee; and the former Eden Balestramon, a school teacher.
“My father used to be captain of a wooden cargo vessel sailing the Caluya-Cebu route,” Dee recalled, “His sea life ended when the boat sank off the coastal town of Anini-y. He was lucky to have survived with the help of rescuers.”
I told Dee of the day I had talked to their mayor on why she is so passionate in enlisting scores of promising students to her scholarship program. She had answered it was to enable her people to prosper along with the municipality.
Surprisingly, despite its seeming isolation from the mainland and low population of 30,000, Caluya is the richest town of Antique with an average annual income approaching half a billion pesos. But while its jump from 4th to 1st class municipality in 2007 is unprecedented, it’s primarily because of taxes from Semirara Mining and Power Corporation that explores coal in Semirara, one of its island barangays.
Coal is not forever. There will come a time when Caluya will have to be self-reliant.
“I will do my share,” Dee said, “by educating farmers on modernized farming that would accelerate and maximize crop production. But of course, we are not really primitive. In fact, we now rely mostly on mechanical threshers, hand tractors, rice mills and sugar cane mills. Slowly but surely, we are acquiring high-tech harvesters and transplanters that could plant and harvest rice, corn and sugar cane.”
May your tribe increase, Dee Balestramon Lucena. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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