MANKAYAN, Benguet – The municipal government and concerned sectors agreed to line p simple but meaningful activities to celebrate the town’s 108th founding anniversary as part of the efforts to gradually and safely jumpstart recovery from the ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that caused the implementation of various levels of community quarantine for nearly a year now to contain the spread of the virus.
With the theme ‘Soar High Mankayan,’ the activities will only be conducted on March 11-12, 2021 with strict adherence to the prevailing basic health and safety protocols and with limited attendance in the scheduled gatherings.
Mayor Frenzel A. Ayong stated that based on the agreement of members of the steering committee that was organized to ascertain the viability of pursuing with the limited activities, the celebration will start with a simple program in the morning of March 11, 2021 which will be followed by the launching of the paragliding that will serve as one of the town’s major crowd drawer once the community quarantine protocols will be eased up,
In the evening of the aforesaid date, there will be a thanksgiving dinner that will be attended by religious ministers for them to continue including in their prayers the immediate recovery of the country from the serious negative impact of the pandemic that caused heavy losses on employment, economic activities and sources of livelihood of the people.
On March 12, 2021, there will be an eco-walk and tree planting event that will be followed by a women’s congress to be attended by hundreds of women leaders from the town’s 12 b barangays.
Under a municipal ordinance that institutionalized the annual celebration of the town’s founding anniversary, such celebration will be conducted every second Thursday of March.
Last year, the municipal government decided to cancel the various activities that it earlier lined up for the celebration of the 107th founding anniversary of the municipality.
Mayor Ayong pointed out that the simple but meaningful activities that will be lined up for this year’s celebration is part of the ongoing efforts of the local government to allow the gradual recovery and to bring back the resilience of the people who were heavily impacted by the nearly one year of being under various levels of community quarantine.
According to him, there will be a limited number of people who will be invited to attend the activities to ensure that there will be strict adherence to the prevailing health and safety protocols to prevent the occurrence of unnecessary incidents that might cause the sudden surge of COVID cases in the municipality.
He called on the residents to understand the limitation on the participants of the activities because it is in compliance with the prescribed guidelines of the inter-agency task force that imposed certain limits on the conduct of mass gatherings as it is still important for the municipality to celebrate the town’s founding anniversary that resulted to its existence over a century ago.
Mankayan is one of the towns in northern Benguet that serves as both an agriculture and mining community where the municipality remains to be one of the five first-class municipalities in the province deriving its income from mining activities. By HENT
