ANGELES CITY- Despite earlier reports the APEC Leaders’ Meeting in 2015 would be confined within Metro Manila for security reasons, Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan said he has been advised to prepare hosting some 1,000 foreign participants, including APEC ministers.
Pamintuan said he has set a year-and-ahalf time frame to rush with plans to beautify this city, including the removal of “ugly spaghetti wires” of telephone companies who have already agreed to move underground their tangle of wires hanging from posts, initially at this city’s socalled “heritage district” where Spanish-era houses have been preserved.
“I have been advised to prepare for hosting as much as 1,000 APEC participants who could be housed in our local hotels, while the ministers might stay at the Clark Freeport,” he said in his monthly briefing with local media.
Pamintuan said his beautification deadline also covers building a park that would require laying concrete plate over the Sapang Balen creek near the well-preserved Pamintuan mansion, the site of the first commemoration of Phippine Independence by Emilio Aguinaldo on June 12, 1899, a year after the Kawit, Cavite declaration of independence.
Roads in the area would be permanently closed for promenaders, he said. Already, the city government has forged an agreement with the local Kuliat Foundation for funding for this park.
Earlier, unnamed sources from the national organizing committee for the APEC meeting to be hosted by the Philippines in 2015 were quoted in media to have said the event, expected to be participated in by at least 21 countries, would be limited to Metro Manila for security concerns.
When the Philippines hosted an APEC Leaders’ Summit in 1996, the Leaders’ Meeting was held in the Subic Freeport. This precedent has led several local governments to express interest in hosting some APEC events in 2015.
Apart from Clark and neighboring Angeles, the other local governments offering to host some of the events are Cebu, Tagaytay, Subic, Albay, Iloilo, Bacolod, Boracay and Davao.
Guillermo Luz, who is the overall coordinator for APEC NOC, said some APEC meetings on the run to the APEC Leaders’ Summit may be held in any of these sites that could meet their criteria, as the summit would include a total of 22 top level APEC meetings within the 12-month period in the Philippines prior to the APEC Leaders’ Summit.
Other meetings would include four senior officials’ meetings, and related working group meetings and three regular annual ministerial meetings of the finance, trade and joint trade and foreign ministers meeting. There will also be APEC Business Advisory Council Meeting and APEC CEO Summit.
These meetings would be held prior to the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting that will span over seven days including pre-Leaders’ Meeting. Criteria for site selection include the organization of the area including the public and private and the written commitment from the local leadership; facilities and infrastructure; security and public safety; risk assessment and disaster preparedness plans in place; power and water conditions; back-up sites; cleanliness, sanitation condition; medical services availability; hospital services; definite post-APEC plans; partnership between national government, LGU and private sector; and livable city principles.
Pamintuan said that preparations for APEC would also include rushing the widening of local major roads with national funds worth at least P100 million and the lighting of posts along Friendship Highway at the western perimeter of Clark, also costing about P100 million.
The mayor also bared plans to dismantle “flower boxes” along the MacArthur highway in the tourism and commercial district in Barangay Balibago leading to Clark. “This is to give way to bicycle lanes,” he said.
