Mayor Pascual bares programs for “Araw ng Orani”

ORANI, Bataan – Mayor Efren “Bondjong” Pascual, Jr. of this first-class town will lead the week-long celebration of 120^th Araw ng Orani next week from March 6 to 10.

At 6:30am on Monday, March 6, a thanksgiving mass will be celebrated at the Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish followed by a colorful grand parade along the major roads of the town where municipal employees and local officials, barangay officials and tanod (watchmen), senior citizens, fishermen, farmers and students will showcase their respective colorful costumes.

A clean-up drive within the municipal hall premises will be done on Tuesday (March 7) by different sectors composed of barangay officials and tanod, farmers and fishermen, students for various schools, senior citizens and municipal employees.

On March 8, a parade of the town’s businesses will be shown to the public in their “Parade of the Establishments.”

March 9 will be the date of the much awaited “Alimango/Sugpo (crabs and prawns) Festival” street dancing competition where students from the town’s various schools will feature their creativity and dancing skills depicting the town’s major product earning the title as the “seafood capital” of the province.

Lastly on Friday, March 10, the 8 kilometer-stretch road to Barangay Tala will be planted with sunflowers dubbed as “sunflower walk.”

The activities, according to Mayor Bondjong Pascual, are all aligned to the municipal government’s vision that “By 2020, Orani is within the Top 5 Ecotourism destinations in Central Luzon.”

“In the coming weeks before the Holy Week on the month April, we expect more than 3,000 visitors,” Pascual said.

Orani is the home of Neoclassical Diocesan Marian Shrine and Pilgrimage Church located at the heart of the municipality. It is considered as one of the major destination sites of tourists and pilgrims from different places during the Catholic Church’s traditional “Visita Iglesia.”