Government of Maribojoc: Travel, Business and News

Archbishop Pedro Dean of the Archdiocese of Palo leads today’s pontifical mass as the city marks today the 116th annual fiesta honoring Sr. Sto. Nino. The mass is concelebrated by a great number of priests all over the diocese with the retired Bishop of Calbayog and the Bishop of Naval, Bishop Filomeno Bactol as the Liturgist.

Bishop Isabelo Abarquez, auxiliary bishop of Palo announced that the fiesta today will be highlighted with the customary fluvial procession and the land procession. Thousands of devotees are expected to join the fluvial procession at 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon. The fluvial procession starts and ends at the port area participated in by well decorated sea crafts all carrying images of the city’s patron, Sr. Sto. Niño.

Right after the fluvial procession, the image of the Sr. Sto. Nino is brought down to join in the land procession which will end at the Sto. Niño Church. This day June 29 marks the return of the Sto. Niño image to Tacloban after it was lost at a sea mishap many years ago.

It has become a custom that the Feast Day of Senor Sto. Niño is devoted to purely religious activities, hence the socio cultural activities and the Pintados Festival are held on the Vespers day.

The “PGMA- Susan rivalry” which some sectors are trying to paint is only doing more harm than good.

The hint that “plans” from several groups, which have already been brought to Mrs. Poe’s attention seem to be geared to bring down the administration. These kinds of talk tend to only cause Filipinos to panic and be brainwashed into surrendering the national agenda to people who do not have a sense of national direction. These kinds of talk also tend to send the national psyche careening in fright as reflected by the continuing drop of the peso and the markets.

Government therefore needs to make reform moves faster and bigger in order to overwhelm all the noise and uncertainty fast filling the social atmosphere. There is a need to overtake events and stop punctuating them by reaction and explanation of the Administration’s side.

The people need to be shown that there is a leadership they can count on that will apply its vision, vast resources and unparalleled powers not to react to its detractors but to take the nation out of the rut and forward into global pride and competitiveness.

There are no magic pills. The administration just has to be serious and sweeping in addressing basic concerns for food, jobs and peace and order; and in attacking basic ills such as corruption, smuggling, tax evasion, etc., and by channeling otherwise wasted or idle government resources and manpower to achieve these ends.

The sacrifices that the President and her family are making, as well as the implementation radical reforms, are signals of better things ahead.

The Abatan River Management and Development Council (ARMDC) assured it would ascertain that any decision involving development affecting their common river resource would emanate from the people.

ARMDC Chairman and Catigbian Mayor Roberto Salinas told the media in a press conference for the Visayaswide Local and Regional Economic Development Forum here a5t the MetroCenter Hotel that their next step in the Abatan cluster is to come up with a river code that would detail the policies an investor will have to follow to use the river for their investments.

The LRED Forum took on Accelerating Economic Development through the Cluster Approach as a theme.

The forum also opened up a venue for Abatan River Cluster towns in Bohol and the South Maqueda Bay cluster in Southern Leyte to be the development planners’ focus for generating models for cluster development replicas for the country, explains Department of Trade and Industry Regional Director Asteria Caberte.

The ARMDC is undertaking the development and promotion of the eco-tourism potential of the common resource shared by Cortes, Maribojoc, Antequera, Balilihan and Catigbian as a ladder for economic development in the area.

All these initiatives are bound by a common theme: environment protection and conservation through participative and sustainable eco-tourism, Salinas added.

The ARMDC believes that only by participative cluster development can they be assured of pooling common resources to make scant government development funds go farther.

Salinas reacted to the information that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has granted a mining concession in the mountains belonging to the Abatan watershed.

Another source bared that in the apparent belief of accelerated development, processes were cut short jeopardizing communities consent and violating government environmental compliance rules.

Salinas, who admitted knowing nothing about the mining grant, he it should unite the cluster towns into signifying a strong opposition to the claim.

He added the ARMDC would convene with the five mayors and the key development planners to lay down the guidelines to assure a no-nonsense grass-root participation in development plans.

The LRED, Salinas explained, is one approach that should ensure that the communities are given the ample chance to decide for their own resource utilization and it should be a sublime rule that should be an over-arching.

The LRED, promoted and facilitated by the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Private Sector Promotion Program of the German Development Corporation (GTZ) and adopted by the ARMDC is a bottom-up participatory planning process that builds on the comparative and competitive advantages of the local government units, a prepared material from the forum organizers bared. (PIA)