Three-term Albay Gov. Jose Salceda gained 92 percent of votes for a seat at the House of Representatives.
“Dios Mabalos saindo gabos [I thank you all]. Truly humbled by your love, I accept your command. Let us work together for the greater glory of our beloved Capital District of Albay,” said Salceda.
Salceda is credited for the transformation of Albay province from an economically depressed province frequently ravaged by disasters, to a global standard model of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
Albay is now a Unicef World Biosphere Reserve.
Albay’s development gains in the past nine years are largely felt in health, tourism, education, the local economy and its soaring popularity as pioneer in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
Salceda said that once in Congress, he would push the development strategy he had started on Albay.
The 2nd District which includes Legazpi City, the provincial capital, is Albay’s central business area where the government regional center is situated. The district includes four municipalities—Daraga, site of the world famous Cagsawa Ruins and the Bicol International Airport, now under construction; the historic Camalig town; Manito, home to Luzon’s geothermal wells; and the island of Rapu-rapu, a rich fishing town.
“The provincial government of Albay has worked to provide its constituency better health and medical care and support and greater access to quality education while at the same time working hard to boost the local economy through our tourism efforts,” Salceda said.
“In Albay, we don’t measure development and progress in terms of towering skyscrapers or creating a sprawling metropolis. Instead, our development indicators include, among others, mothers who are no longer dying during childbirth; we are malaria and filariasis-free; our National Achievement Test rank has jumped from 177th in 2007 to 19th in 2012; our regional and provincial hospitals have been modernized,” he added.
The Bicol Regional Training and Teaching Hospital now has a 600-bed hospital facility, housed in its brand new five-storey building—its just completed Emergency Response Trauma Unit. It also has a separate Cancer Center Building, and Heart Center Building.
Salceda said in his three terms as governor, he had observed interesting growth patterns. “In 2006, foreign tourist arrivals in Albay was only 8,700. This number jumped to 374,949 in 2015, and the numbers are even greater if we count domestic tourist arrival which was a mere 124, 675 in 2006 but has exponentially grown to 1,042,646 in 2015, for a total of 1,417,646 arrivals,” he noted.
What these numbers don’t expressly show is how the huge increase in the influx of tourist arrivals contribute significantly to the growth of Albay’s local economy.
As Unicef’s third World Biosphere Reserve in the Philippines, Albay takes pride in its varied terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, forests, grasslands, agricultural lands, caves, and freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems.