The Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) Visayas acknowledged the Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) for supporting its Save the Buhisan Watershed Project.
The PBSP gave Veco a seedling of banilad tree as token of appreciation.
Veco corporate comunications chief Ethel Natera received the seedling.
Barangay Banilad in Cebu City is named after the indigenous specie, Sterculia Comosa (or Serculia Philipinensis).
Veco became the single biggest donor to the PBSP’s project.
In 2010, the power firm donated P19.4 milliion to fund a reforestation park project in the Central Cebu Protected Landscape (CCPL) where the Buhisan dam is situated.
On the same year, Veco and PBSP signed an agreement for the rehabilitation, protection and conservation of the CPPL and Mactan Island.
The Buhisan Watershed and Forest Reserve is one of the five protected areas within the 29,062 hectare Central Cebu Protected Landscape.
It is a facility of the Metropolitan Cebu Water District that provides safe drinking water to the Cebuano communities.
The other four protected areas are Mananga and Kotkot-Lusaran Watershed and Forest Reserves, and Central Cebu and Sudlon National Parks, where Veco employees have been planting seedlings of Cebu’s native trees since 2009, even before the start of the reforestation project.