The Jose Abad Santos municipality Mayor Jimmy Joyce is leaving no stone unturned in preparation for this week’s Kap’yaan Festival, with all the 26 barangays joining to make the annual festival a huge success.
The Kap’yaan Festival celebrates the founding anniversary of the municipality with an agri-trade fair, tribal presentations and a civic-military parade. This year, Mayor Joyce brought in an amusement show with a Ferris Wheel and other attractions, the first in the municipality. An inter-barangay basketball tournament, a motocross and horse fight, the festival’s top drawer, are the other attractions.
Himself an Ambil (American-Bilaan blood), Mayor Joyce is urging his Bilaan constituents to come in full force and join the Kap’yaan Festival’s February 18 to 20 celebration. (Joyce traces his roots to the pre-war Joyce clan which settled in the Davao Region’s eastern coast especially in Barangay Kulaman).
The first celebration since he won the mayoral race in May last year, Mayor Joyce said he would like to make the festival one of the top tourist attractions in Davao del Sur, to get a share of the tourist pie.
With Vice Mayor Cito Tagalog, Mayor Joyce is urging political leaders and constituents to forget politics and join him in the common effort to make the municipality prosperous.
Mayor Joyce vowed to pursue priority programs lined up since he took office that includes assistance in land titling, water and lighting systems and farm-to-market road to spur farm production. JONG SUYKO
