SABLAN, Benguet – Municipal officials and organizers scheduled the town’s famous Fruit festival on August 7 – September 4, 2023 as part of the ongoing efforts to bring back the in-person gatherings geared towards economic recovery.
Mayor Alfredo Dacumos, Jr. said that the conduct of this year’s crowd drawing event will definitely help in the town’s effort to aggressively promote locally grown fruits to bring back the vibrance of the local economy.
He claimed that organizers proposed to conduct the various activities lined up for this year’s festival mostly on weekends to allow residents and tourists to be able to join the events which are done in-person.
Previously, the town’s fruit festival had been conducted for a week where the various events are squeezed into the week-long celebration.
The local chief executive added that the local government is currently preparing the events that will be included in the schedule which will be released the soonest for the information of everyone awaiting to participate in the events of the festival.
Sablan, a fifth-class municipality, is considered the fruit basket of Benguet because semi-temperate fruits thrive in the various barangays which serve as one of the major source of income of the residents.
Mayor Dacumos expressed hope that there will be no natural calamity that will visit the Northern Luzon area from now on so that farmers will be able to produce quality fruits that will be sold to the residents and visitors during the fruit festival so that they will be able to recover from the negative impact inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic to the main source of livelihood of the people living in the town’s eight barangays.
According to him, the municipality is now a producer of durian, macopa among others that thrive in the south aside from pineapple and banana which are the major fruits in the locality prior to their infestation in the early 2000.
“We hope that the weather will cooperate when we will hold the various activities for this year’s fruit festival so that residents and tourists alike will be able to enjoy the gatherings. We want our farmers to be able to market their produce with the conduct of the festival for them to start recovering from the negative impact of the pandemic to their established sources of livelihood,” he stressed.
The mayor appealed to the residents of the Baguio-La Trinidad-Itogon-Sablan-Tuba-Tublay (BLISTT) to support the lined up activities for this year’s fruit festival so that the primary objective of the resumption of the in-person events will be realized, especially in ensuring the promotion of the fruit produce of the farmers.
Part of the activities that will be lined up for the fruit festival will be the conduct of the agro-industrial fair, skills competitions in the preparation of fruits, civic and military parade and float parade among others.
The fruit festival is an institutionalized crowd drawing event conducted every first week of September that serves as a venue to promote locally produced fruits grown in the different parts of the municipality.
