IN a turnover ceremony on Monday, Manila Mayor Joseph E. Estrada unveiled a P20-million state-of-the-art technology and laboratory center at the city-run Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM).
The new MVP Technology and Innovation Center was built through funds donated by business tycoon Manuel V. Pangilinan. It is expected to improve the learning experience of PLM’s engineering and architecture students.
Built at the newly reconstructed Gusaling Emilio Ejercito Sr., the MVP Technology and Innovation Center occupies two floors of the school building. It has fully equipped laboratories that most benefit the city’s engineering students. It also contains instrumentation and control laboratories, four computer laboratories, a mechanical/manufacturing laboratory, drawing rooms, a data center and an information and communication center.
Estrada thanked the chairman of PLDT-Smart and One Meralco Foundation, adding that Pangilinan is committed to long-term benefit programs and donations for the public university.
“On behalf of PLM officials, faculty and students, as well as the entire city of Manila, I extend my deepest thanks to you for this generous gesture of support to our city’s educational sector. The MVP Technology and Innovation Center is an important step in enriching the learning experience of PLM students as they seek to be the next generation of our city’s leaders,” Estrada told Pangilinan.
Manila is where Pangilinan was born and where he spent his formative years, which is why he has always wanted to provide more help to the city, particularly to its public schools, like the PLM. He said it is with “great joy” to turn over the new facility, and he, in turn, thanked Estrada and PLM President Leonora V. de Jesus for giving him an opportunity to help the university and give back to the city.
“This will be a continuing engagement with PLM, because we have seen how much more they need—they need desks, facilities and a lot more. We will also fix the auditorium,” Pangilinan promised PLM faculty, staff and students present in the event.
Pangilinan, who is also planning to provide on-the-job training and summer jobs to Manila’s information-technology students, extended the credit to his colleagues.
“It is really not just my generosity, but this flows from the generosity and efforts of my colleagues at Meralco and PLDT. They are with me in helping PLM,” Pangilinan said.
De Jesus expressed gratitude for the MVP Technology and Innovation Center, citing its impact on PLM’s College of Engineering and Technology and College of Architecture and Urban Planning. “We’re very grateful to Mr. MVP for his donations, and he is asking what more he can assist the university with,” she said.
PLM has a student population of around 10,000, most of whom are Manila residents who pay no tuition, as they are subsidized in full by the city government. Only transferees, non-Manila residents and probationary or academically delinquent students pay minimal fees to continue education in PLM.
It has been known as the first tertiary-level institution in the country to offer tuition-free education,and the first university funded solely by a city government.