DOLE -7 Welcomes New Regional Director

“I am so happy seeing familiar faces. I am glad to be working again with people who used to extend support to me back then. Let us help each other and I am very confident that we will be able to work on the Region’s objectives and goals together as well.”

This was the message of Elias Cayanong, the new Regional Director of the Department of Labor and Employment Regional Office (DOLE-7) during the recent joint DOLE-RCC flag raising ceremony at the DOLE-7 Building.

Cayanong accepted the key of responsibility from DOLE-7 outgoing Regional Director Exequiel Sarcauga during a simple turn-over ceremony before the Regional Coordinating Committee (RCC-7) members and staff.

Cayanong stressed the value of coordination and cohesion not only among the employees of the DOLE but also among the Department’s attached agencies.

“I’ve known a lot of RCC heads for quite some time and until now, I still treasure the support they extended to me when I was still here in the Region a few years ago. For that, my heart will always stay grateful,” said the new DOLE-7 head.

From October 2004 to February 2005, Cayanong was the Assistant Regional Director of DOLE-7. Then he became the Region’s Regional Director from 2005 until March 2011. He had a three-year stint being a Labor Attache in Taichung, Taiwan from March 2011 to April 2014.

Before coming back to Region 7, he served as the Regional Director of DOLE Regional Office 8 from May 2014 until March 2017.

“This place is not foreign to me at all. Cebu City is my birthplace and I am so excited to working again here. My heart is overjoyed and at the same time humbled for being given the opportunity to be serving Region 7 once again,” he added.

Cayanong urged the heads of the field offices, divisions, and units as well as the staff to give their best and always make sure to protect the image of the office, never putting it into any kind of compromise.

He especially gave policy directions on the Department’s frontline services and flagship programs such as the Alien Employment Permit (AEP), Livelihood, Labor Market Information (LMI) and the Labor Laws Compliance System (LLCS) among others, underscoring the need to strictly follow their process cycle time (PCT).

“We will be observing and implementing new processes in order to augment our delivery of services and I hope that everyone will keep an open mind and give the new system a chance to work,” Cayanong said, adding that there are certain issues that the region will have to concentrate on in order to catch up with the targets for the first semester of the calendar year.

In making sure that each and everyone in the region is doing what is mandated of them, the DOLE-7 head said that he does not have to control and check every part of the personnel’s assigned tasks and responsibilities.

Micromanaging people, he said, is not part of how he is going to manage and lead the men and women of the region.

Extending support to Cayanong is the newly installed Assistant Regional Director Cyril Ticao, who was the OIC-Regional Director of the Negros Island Region (NIR).

“We have chemistry. And what I am going to do as ARD is to give my full support to whatever policy directions and marching orders that RD Cayanong will want the Region to focus on. After all, all the innovations and the changes that will be institutionalized in Region 7 will be for the good not only of our external customers but also of our internal customers – the men and women behind the delivery of the Department’s programs and services,” said Ticao. (jsme/PIA7-Cebu/DOLE-7)