TACLOBAN CITY – As part of the City Government of Borongan’s smart city initiative, a Libre Sakay app was launched Monday (March 4), which launching happened alongside the unveiling of the Smart Technologies Innovation Center at the Eastern Samar State University (ESSU).
The app aims to augment the operations of the city’s Libre Sakay program where recipients of the free transport service are given easy access to the transport system with its QR-generated IDs and bus tracking features, among others.
In a demonstration, the app showed two of the Libre Sakay buses transporting the first batch of Libre Sakay students from the city proper to ESSU. The Libre Sakay bus stops were also identified along the way as the vehicles picked up each student-passenger.
City Mayor Jose Ivan Dayan Agda stressed the significance of the city’s collaboration with ESSU and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in its bid toward digitalization.
“The cooperation and collaboration with our national agency and the academe produce good results. I know that the think-tank of our city will be the State University,” Agda said.
Melvin Sacmar of DOST-Eastern Visayas shared that Smart City Borongan is a long-term program that aims to create innovative avenues for the delivery of the LGU’s basic services. He added that aside from the Libre Sakay application, a Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) is also slated to be launched by the city government for the efficient recording of its employees’ profiles.
Borongan is said to be the first implementor of the Smart City initiative in Eastern Visayas. By Marie Tonette Marticio (EV Mail March 4-10, 2024 issue)
