Dagupan officials call for public unity towards nation building

By Alex Romeo R. Fernandez

Wednesday 13th of June 2012

DAGUPAN CITY, June 13 (PIA) -- Officials in this city have called upon the public to join hands in solving the problems of the country.

“We must fight poverty,” said Vice Mayor Belen T. Fernandez during the 114th Independence Day celebration held at the Dagupan City National High School (DCNHS) on Tuesday.

“We must fight abuse from all sources,” she said before the school teachers, local officials, the police, and some Freemasons who were present during the ceremony.

She advised them to remember the actions of our heroes, who, she said, gave Filipinos the independence “so that we could gather enough strength to face today’s problem.”

Meanwhile, Schools Division Superintendent Alma Ruby C. Torio said the public should make an effort to preserve democracy.

Mayor Benjamin S. Lim noted that while the country is already free from the bondage of foreigners, it is not yet free from other problems.

“Are we already free from drugs, from having to go abroad to find decent income, from lack of education?” he asked as he urged the people to cooperate with one another in creating solution to such problems.

Noting the importance of the family in nation building, he said, “we cannot have great nation, if we cannot have great communities. We cannot have great communities if we cannot raise the standard of the family.”

Referring to this year’s theme “Pananagutan ng Bayan para sa Tuwid na Daan,” he said, we can share that responsibility.

After the ceremony, the participants planted some narra and malunggay seedlings inside the campus. The tree planting activity is a support of the Department of Education to the National Greening Program of the national government, which aims to plant one billion trees in the entire country by 2016. (JCR/ARRF/PIA 1-Pangasinan)