NAGA CITY, Aug. 13 (PIA) –The city government of Naga and the Archdiocese of Caceres, anticipating the influx of millions of guests, visitors and pilgrims for the month-long celebration of Peῆafrancia Festival 2018, officially sealed its partnership with other agencies thru a Memorandum of Cooperation Signing on Saturday, August 11 at the Archbishop’s Residence, here.
The Joint Operations Center (JOC) Memorandum of Cooperation Signing is an annual event between the different government and non-government agencies and organizations collaborating to ensure a safe and solemn celebration of the Peῆafrancia fiesta every year.
The JOC is tasked to develop an effective and efficient command, control, coordination, collaboration and communication system for the festivity. This is to ensure that programs and activities instituted during the Peῆafrancia Festival will be conducted in an atmosphere of peace and order and the solemnity and sensitivity of the nature and character of the festivities will be preserved.
Naga City Mayor John G. Bongat and His Grace Most Rev. Rolando J. Tria-Tirona, O.C.D., DD, Archbishop of Caceres led the signing of the memorandum of cooperation between and amongst government and non-government agencies which will comprise the Inter-Agency Task Group (IATG). The group will work together for the successful conduct and staging of the Peῆafrancia festivity.
In his message, Bongat expressed his gratitude to all the members of the IATG as he focused his brief notes on the innovations being undertaken this year, namely; empowering the IATG clusters, conduct of the IATG cluster workshop and the strengthening of the Joint Operations Center.
“It’s empowering the different sectors and clusters. For the first time, we now have team leaders for different clusters. The city government of Naga, particularly the Archdiocese of Caceres leads the celebration. However, during the festivity, particularly the Traslacion and the Fluvial Procession and other related religious and non-religious activities, different clusters will take the lead,” Bongat declared.
On his 6th year of witnessing the Peῆafrancia festivity this year, Archbishop Tirona have nothing but pure admiration and applause for the wonderful participation and partnership of the city government and the various inter-agencies of the government for the staging of this annual Marian event.
“What makes this religious celebration unique is the participation of all agencies of government, the participation of our students, our elderly, and witnessing how your hands form that web or human chain to strengthen, make our celebration a very successful and very meaningful one for our people,” Tirona stressed.
Tirona looks forward that this year will not just be a successful one in terms of cooperation, in terms of partnership and engagement, but above all, it will inject in our spirit, that beautiful virtues of humility that is asked of us, especially today, when everyone longs for power.
“It longs for humility because humility is actually the strongest power we can ever do – the power to change.” (JRM-PIA5/Camarines Sur)