Dinagyang Feast attracts media practitioners

MORE than 700 media practitioners, some coming from Mindanao, Metro Manila and foreign countries, are scrambling for accreditation in order to cover the 2013 Dinagyang Festival on January 26 and 27.

Iloilo Dinagyang Foundation president Ramon Cua Locsin said they are sorting media applicants as mainstream media, photographers, and bloggers with a color coding scheme to indicate their respective performance area and stage assignments.

Locsin said the mainstream media practitioners are assigned with a media identification card (ID) with green patch for Stage I at the Freedom Grandstand, pink ID at Stage 2 at the Provincial Capitol area, yellow ID at Stage 3 at Quezon Ledesma St., and orange ID at Stage 4 at the Ma. Clara area.

He said roving media practitioners are issued with media IDs with peach patch, while photographers are issued with red orange ID and bloggers with blue ID.

Police security personnel assigned at the more than three-kilometer-parade route on Saturday and Sunday are already briefed of the color coding scheme of media IDs and to allow entry of only media practitioners with IDs appropriate in a particular stage area.

Locsin said the Dinagyang Festival has reached an international level and known in several countries of the world especially in Asia, New York, and Guam in USA after a Dinagyang group performed there.

Dinagyang is also the current grand champion of the national Aliwan Festival of Festivals held in Metro Manila every month of April and named as the Best Tourism Event of the country by the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines, Locsin added. (Lydia C. Pendon)