THE Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) will push for five priority programs this year including traffic management, improving the investment environment, enterprise development, job generation and women empowerment, the business group’s newly installed president, Convergys Philippines, Inc. Chairwoman Marife Zamora, said on Wednesday.
In her address during the 2017 MAP Inaugural Meeting, Zamora said she would prioritize the group’s traffic management advocacy to solve the problem that had adversely affected business and employee productivity.
“We will continue pushing for the implementation of the MAP’s Traffic and Infrastructure Recommendations that were submitted to the government in August 2015 through a paper entitled ‘Traffic and Transportation Problems of Metro Manila: A Holistic Approach,’” she said.
MAP will continue its “Ease of Doing Business” program by offering to the government practical solutions that will help improve the business registration process and address other bureaucratic problems, she said.
Zamora also discussed the MAP’s Emerge Program or the Educated Marginalized Entrepreneurs Resource Generation Program.
“We will continue assisting the entrepreneurial poor who would like to go into businesses which have big potential for growth and job generation,” she said, noting that the program has three projects, 19 partners-in-mission and 35 volunteer mentors.
MAP will also pursue employment generation by helping provide income to families, stimulate demand for goods and services and promote sustainable growth.
“Socially, employment promotes social development, keeps the talent in the country, encourages the immersion of marginalized sectors of society, and improves social welfare,” she said.
Zamora said MAP had formed a Women Empowerment Committee to address issues such as women’s ability to manage risk and improve their economic status and well-being.
“This committee will also be expected to help increase the number of women members of the MAP and help encourage women executives to go up the ladder and reach the top positions in their respective organizations,” she said.
Zamora is the third woman president and the 68th president of the association since its inception in 1950.
Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno led the oath-taking of the new set of MAP board members and officers.
In her speech, Sereno said trust in the justice system fell following extrajudicial killings in the country.
“Despite all of these positive gains and even greater potential gains, we have to deal with the daily reality for daily accounts of unsolved killings, many of them committed brazenly against drug pushing or addiction. It is not surprising therefore that the perception of the rule of law in our country has swung from marked improvement to a downgrade,” Sereno said.
The chief justice noted that in the Rule of Law Index of the World Justice Project, the Philippines fell to 70th place in 2016 from 60th in 2014, and 51st in 2015.
Sereno said “it is only when institutions faithfully comply with what the law requires can we experience long-term stability as a country even beyond changes in administration.”
with JOMAR CANLAS