BAGUIO CITY December 27 – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan underscored that public-private partnership (PPP) is still the best way to go in the annual conduct of the Panagbenga or the Baguio flower festival, the city’s internationally recognized crowd drawing event, to ensure its sustainability as a must-see event in the country.
The local chief executive pointed out concerned stakeholders must remember that it is the private sector that started and nurtured the conduct of the flower festival until it was able to gain international recognition that is why there is a need for the local government to give the necessary recognition to the efforts of the private sector in effectively and efficiently handling the month-long festivities.
He explained the conduct of the 23rd edition of the Panagbenga from February 1 to March 4, 2018 will be a balance of the major events that will be handled by the local government and the private sector considering that it has been the situation even when the activities were being handled by the Baguio Flower Festival Foundation, Inc. (BFFFI).
“We have to give the private sector an important role in the handling of the major events that were lined up for the flower festival next year because the said sector had been our partner even since the flower festival was conceptualized, developed, implemented and nurtured over the past two decades,” Domogan stressed.
He emphasized the duties and responsibilities of both the representatives of the local government and the private sector in the Panagbenga executive and working committees have been clearly defined under the amended administrative orders that he issued to illustrate the synergy between the local government and the private sector in overseeing the activities that were lined up for the upcoming conduct of the Panagbenga 2018.
While there were certain individuals who were given specific duties and responsibilities in the conduct of the annual festival, Domogan claimed the public is not prohibited from coming out with their suggestions and recommendations on how to further improve the staging of the traditional events as well as other community-led activities that will contribute in enticing more foreign and domestic visitors to visit the city and witness the different festival events next year.
He asserted that the local government will not allow vested interests of certain individuals and groups to prevail in the conduct of the various events lined up for the festival because what matters should be the interest of the people of the city who are supposed to reap the fruits of the successful staging of the flower festival.
In 1995, lawyer Damaso Bangaoet, father of the Panagbenga, who was then the vice president of the John Hay Poro Point Development Corporation (JPDC), a subsidiary of the State-owned Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), was looking for an event that will draw people to flock to the city during lean tourism months until the flower festival was founded considering that the month of February is the time when flowers in neighboring towns of Benguet blossom.
Domogan named the festival Panagbenga which is a Kankana-ey term for the blossoming of flowers.**
By Dexter A. See
