BAGUIO CITY – Officials of the Cordillera office of the Department of Education and the local governments of Baguio, Benguet and La Trinidad are ready to present their bid to the Palaro Selection Board (PSB) for the hosting of next year’s Palarong Pambansa that will be considered as the ‘coolest Palaro ever.’
Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan, Gov. Crescencio Pacalso, Mayor Romeo Salda and Dep Ed-CAR regional director May Eclar met Tuesday to finalize the bid of Baguio and Benguet for the hosting of next year’s Palaro games after the inspectorate team from the Dep Ed Central office found that the sports and billeting facilities were able to comply with the minimum requirements of the prescribed standards.
Supposedly, the bidding for the hosting of next year’s Palarong Pambansa was scheduled on September 22, 2017 but it was eventually moved to September 27, 2017.
Aside from Baguio City and Benguet, the other bidders for the hosting of next year’s Palarong Pambansa are Marikina City, Bulacan, Tarlac, Ilagan City, Isabela and Vigan City, Ilocos Sur.
Domogan underscored one of the distinct advantage of Baguio and Benguet as the host of next year’s Palarong Pambansa is the fact that there will be no suspension of the scheduled games at the height of the scorching heat of the sun from 10:30 am to 3 pm because the maximum temperature that could prevail during the day will be around 25 to 27 degrees Celsius which will still be tolerable for athletes, thus, there will be no unnecessary interruption in the conduct of the scheduled games.
Under the guidelines for the bidding of the hosting of next year’s Palarong Pambansa, each of the participating bidders will be required to have 5 members of the presenters who will present their bids for a period of 15 minutes.
The Palaro Selection board is chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Education and co-chaired by the Chairman of the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) with the education Undersecretaries and regional directors as members.
The local committee created purposely for the bidding was able to address pertinent issues and concerns that could be raised by the PSB, particularly effective and efficient traffic management, availability of basic services for the over 15,000 athletes and officials, the conformity of the playing venues to the national standards and other packages that the host local governments could offer to the athletes and officials once chosen to host the annual sports competition.
Baguio City attempted to bid for the hosting of the 1996 Palarong Pambansa but the local government was not successful in the said try and he same was not repeated up to date.
Members of the local bidding committee remain optimistic that the PSB will decide on the merits of the bids to be presented by the participating local governments interested to host the 2018 Palarong Paabansa so that Baguio and Benguet will have a good chance of being selected to be the next host of the annual sports competition spearheaded by the concerned government agencies to discover more sports talents from the countryside. /By Dexter A. See
