President Benigno S. Aquino III. EDWIN BACASMAS
President Benigno Aquino III on Wednesday launched a government text messaging system to speed up the dissemination of presidential declarations, information on government programs, weather updates and disaster warnings to 100,000 recipients per province nationwide.
Mr. Aquino was the first to send a message via the Philippine Information Agency’s Information Text Board—a public-private partnership project of the PIA and the National Telecommunications Commission with mobile networks Globe and Smart Communications.
“With this project, we will become text mates with many of our countrymen as regards important information that they have to know,” President Aquino said during the launch of PIA’s text blast system during the agency’s 25th anniversary Wednesday.
Text blast
Lawyer Jose Fabia, director-general of the Philippine Information Agency, said it would be up to the PIA’s “force multipliers” in the regions to further spread the text messages to the rest of the public in their respective areas.
Fabia said text blast messages would contain items such as presidential pronouncements, updates on advisories on weather and disaster situations, government programs and services and news advisories.
Aside from the text blast project, President Aquino also inaugurated the PIA’s new website and its art gallery that would feature works by students from tertiary education institutions in Metro Manila.
In his speech, President Aquino said the PIA’s mandate was not to make the government look good but to inform the people so they would be able to make an informed decision when the need arises.
“When martial law was declared, there came to be a Ministry of Information. To those who would admit that they are of my age, we know that we didn’t get any information from the Ministry of Information,” President Aquino said, citing the then ministry’s role in censoring the various media.