Oro gears up for Kagay-an fest

THE City Government of Cagayan de Oro will handle this year’s Kagay-an Festival to commemorate the feast of Saint Augustine.

In the previous years, Promote CDO, a group composed of different private agencies, had been organizing the Kagay-an Festival activities.

However, for this year, Mayor Vicente Y. Emano created an executive committee, by virtue of Executive Order 047-22012, that is tasked to prepare, plan, organize and implement programs and activities for the annual feast of the city’s patron saint.

The committee is chaired by Vice Mayor Caesar Ian Acenas, who also created working committees that will look into the details of the different events and activities.

Acenas said they are now in the process of planning the activities and finalizing the budget, citing that they would be starting from zero.

“Promote CDO gave up the responsibility to organize the events as they wanted to venture more into promoting the city in a much bigger horizon,” he said.

The group turned over the proceeds of last year’s Kagay-an Festival but Acenas said they are still in the process of doing an inventory of the total amount.

“The operational expenses turned over by Promote CDO will be used in this year’s festivity,” he said.

He assured that this year’s fiesta celebration would somehow ease all the troubles and burdens of Kagay-anons, especially the survivors of Tropical Storm Sendong.

In the recent committee meeting, City Councilor Simeon Licayan, committee chair on and ways and means, said the City Government has decided to come up with a simple yet memorable festivity.

Licayan said they created a sub-committee that would look into the possible partnership between the City Government and the private sector so that the city will not spend beyond its budget.

He assured that more events were added to make the 2012 Kagay-an Festival fun-filled.

“The committee has come up with seven core events for this year’s festival,” Licayan said.

Among the activities lined up include the search for Miss Kagay-an 2012, agro fair, rodeo and horse show, cultural street dancing competition, P.E. rhythmic dance, civic-military and golden float parade, Kagay-an festival run and pyrolympics.

“Duaw Kagay-an” will also be held, to be handled by the special events committee headed by Councilor Alexander Dacer.

According to Supervising Tourism Officer Imma Rae Gatuslao, Kagay-anons who are now based in the United States and other countries are again expected to visit Cagayan de Oro to join the festivities and take part in “Duaw Kagay-an.”

Aside from hosting a special dinner for the balikbayans, Acenas said the city government will tour them to investment sites as well as relocation areas. (Nicole J. Managbanag)