PCSO moving back to first home

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) will move  its various units to  Manila, its first site when the agency was created in 1934.

Only the logistics unit is located on San Marcelino Street in Manila.  The corporate unit is in Mandaluyong City, while the charity assistance and medical services departments are in Quezon City.

“The PCSO is going home,”  vice chair and general manager Jose Ferdinand M. Rojas II said, adding that all the units will transfer to San Marcelino after the construction of  new buildings.

Once completed, hopefully in 2017 or 2018, the entire complex in San Marcelino is expected to  cover around 36,000 square meters of floor area.

In the early years, all the PCSO units were located at the Soriano Building in Divisoria, near Claro M. Recto Street, in Manila. All the units moved to  San Marcelino in the 1960s, with the acquisition of a 1.19-hectare property there.

In 1998,  the units were  transferred to the Quezon Institute Complex in Quezon City because  it was more spacious. After the area  was declared unsafe, the units had to be transferred  to the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City.

The PCSO’s contract with the PICC lapsed on June 30, prompting the management to look for other locations.