Legazpi City celebrates Galing Pook, other awards

Legazpi City has been getting well-deserved recognition recently, receiving the prestigious Galing Pook Award this year.

The city was also judged as among three of the country’s most livable and was conferred the “Governance Trailblazer” award by the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA), a nongovernment organization advocating good governance.

Mayor Noel E. Rosal, in a statement, said the awards are a source of pride and inspiration for the people of Legazpi as the city government continues to work on its mission of promoting inclusive economic growth and sustainable development.

“We will definitely keep moving forward toward higher goals,” Rosal said.

In a ceremony at Edsa Shangri-La Manila Hotel on Oct. 21, Rosal received on behalf of the city the Galing Pook Award for Ten Most Outstanding Local Governance Programs of 2014.

The Legazpi City Grand Central Terminal has been dubbed as an example of a profitable public-private partnership program (PPP) and the city is among 10 winners recognized for excellence in local governance through its PPP undertakings.

The terminal, a flagship project of Mayor Rosal, is a P300-million undertaking that was completed without the local government spending anything being done under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) scheme.

The city also placed second in the Livable Cities Design Challenge (LCDC), solidifying its spot as one of the venues for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in 2015. Iloilo City was the overall winner in the challenge and Cebu City came in third.

The awarding ceremony was held at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City on Oct. 15.

LCDC is a design competition that seeks to encourage cities to plan and design their places for resilience and livability.