BAUKO, Mountain Province – The municipal government decided to down size the upcoming celebration of the town’s Begnas di Bauko as part of the mandated precautionary measures that should be adopted by concerned authorities to prevent the possible spread of the dreaded Corona Virus Disease (COVID) 2019.
Mayor Abraham B. Akilit said this year’s celebration of the town’s crowd drawing event will focus on the rich culture and traditions of the people which had been passed on to generations to help in inspiring today’s youth to practice the same for the benefit of future generations of the municipality.
The annual Begnas di Bauko is celebrated every second week of March and serves as a thanksgiving celebration for the bountiful harvest of the people from their agriculture plantation areas that are distributed in the town’s 22 barangays.
Among the major activities of the festival that will not push through this year because of the COVID scare include the grand streetdancing parade, the annual Search for Ms. Bauko and other related activities that tend to draw the influx of people to serve as a precautionary measure against the dreaded COVID 2019.
The city chief executive added that one of the highlights of this year’s Begnas di Bauko is the projected inauguration of the P36 million evacuation center that was constructed within a portion of the municipal government’s property wherein the funds for the said facility came from the Cordillera office of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD-CAR).
According to him, the evacuation center can accommodate some 200 individuals at one time aside from the structure having a multipurpose center that will serve as a training facility for interested disaster risk reduction and management volunteers and responders, especially those coming from the 22 barangays considering that barangays are required to have their own trainings for their own pool of volunteers to help save life and limb during the wrath of natural and man-made calamities.
The annual Begnas di Bauko was institutionalized by the municipal government as its own crowd drawing event when Mayor Akilit assumed as the town’s municipal chief executive.
He claimed that what will push through will be the traditional program and culture-based performances of the participating individuals and groups in the different contests on culture which had been prepared by the organizers of this year’s Begnas di Bauko.
He called on residents from the town’s 22 barangays to patronize the down sized events for this year’s festival because the municipal government has to embrace the appropriate and recommended precautionary measures to prevent people from contracting the dreaded COVID 2019 that will eventually compromise their health condition, especially those who are sick.
Akilit asserted that the municipal government remains optimistic that the COVID scare will eventually die down in the coming weeks once experts will be able to rule out the possible occurrence of a pandemic so that people who will be attending crowd drawing events will have a piece of mind in not contracting the illness for them to be able to enjoy the festivities that will push through amidst the prevalence of panic among the people in the different parts of the country over the past several weeks that the illness had been spreading.
By Hent
