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By Rommel C. Lontayao, Reporter
Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim expressed hope that the
city government can regain jurisdiction over Intramuros from the
national government.
“Intramuros, if properly restored to its
former beauty, can be one of the country’s best tourist
attractions. Once the administration of Intramuros is brought back
to the city government, we can start doing some development projects
there,” Lim said.
Regaining Intramuros from the national
government also figures in the expansion plans of the Pamantasan ng
Lungsod ng Maynila.
The Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM), the
country’s premier locally-funded university, is better known for
its accountancy, engineering, medicine, nursing, and physical
therapy programs as its students have performed well in the said
areas in government-administered licensure examinations.
Under its new president, however, the university
may soon be recognized as offering one of the best tourism study
programs in the country.
University President Adel Tamano said PLM’s
location can make it the premier school for tourism.
“PLM is located right inside one of the
Philippines’ main tourist attractions, the historic Walled City of
Manila,” Tamano said.
PLM, situated inside historic Intramuros, will
soon operate a restaurant to serve as laboratory for its tourism
students.
“What we are doing to get to the point of
being the premier university for Tourism is to first create a
restaurant that will actually be the laboratory and the place where
our students will work and learn all the things related to the
tourism industry in relation to menu preparation, marketing, and
other things,” Tamano said.
“If you just set up a restaurant, people might
think what does that have to do with tourism? But if we consider
that the restaurant will be situated right here inside our
Intramuros campus, right within the area where tourists pass by,
then it makes sense,” he added.
The restaurant is planned to be situated inside
one of PLM’s new buildings, along Muralla Street, leading to the
Baluarte de San Diego.
Tamano said the idea of setting up a restaurant
was proposed by the PLM’s College of Tourism, Hotel, Travel and
Industry Management Dean Ramona Ty, a former Tourism Department
undersecretary.
With the establishment of the restaurant, which
Tamano hopes could be operational next semester, tourism students in
the earlier years can be trained inside the campus.
“I want the students, as early as their second
year, to have their training inside the campus through that
restaurant. The on-the-job training, which can be attained outside
the university, should be for the later years,” he said.
The restaurant that has an allocated budget of
around P2 to 3 million, according to Tamano, will be “operated by
the university, but in a sense it is really the students who will do
everything.”
“The students will be taught how to run the
business, how to market, how to serve, everything that you can
conceive of as part of the hotel and restaurant industry, and as
part of tourism. The program that we offer here in PLM is tourism,
but it also includes hotel and restaurant industry management.”
The university president, however, said that
improving the PLM’s Tourism program doesn’t just end with the
establishment of the restaurant.
“We are going to make this restaurant first
and then for the next step, we want to be able to run a hotel,”
Tamano said.
“We see the restaurant as a preliminary step
because the next step once we see that we have the skills necessary
to run something like that is to run a hotel.”
“Actually, we are eyeing places that are
within the control and ownership of the City of Manila to be the
site for the hotel,” Tamano added.
Tamano said that the university does not have
plans to modify the program’s curriculum.
“The curriculum is the same, but the
difference is that I have been stricter on ‘reconsideration’
cases.”
Tamano noted that “there are students who
failed to meet the university’s standards for retention, but since
they have ‘backers,’ they were given reconsiderations and were
readmitted to their colleges.”
“If we allow reconsiderations to happen,
it’s unfair for the other students who are studying well. I will
not allow that,” he said.
“I believe it’s all these ‘recons’ that
have been the pain of the university, and so I am being very strict
on that,” he added.
Tamano said that unlike in the previous
university administrations, deans are now provided security of
tenure.
“We have now appointed deans for specific
terms. Previously, a dean can be appointed, but the moment the
administration doesn’t like him, they’ll get rid of him.”
“That’s not good for the dean, because he
might think that ‘why would he give his best when anytime, he can
be removed in his position,’” Tamano noted.
This previous practice, he said, was in fact
unlawful as the PLM University Charter provides for the security of
tenure of deans.
“Now, the deans can really come up with
academic plans with their own units without thinking they will be
replaced any moment the university administration desires,” added
Tamano, who was appointed university president in August.
The Genuine Opposition spokesman was elected by
the PLM Board of Regents upon recommendation of Mayor Lim.
The educational institution that he now leads is
funded by the city government of Manila, which has allotted a budget
of P250 million for the university this year.
Some 10,000 students study as scholars in the
university, with no or minimal tuition fees paid. The university,
founded in 1965, aims to provide education to the less privileged
but deserving students of Manila.
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