Pangasinan holiday on Tuesday, 10-hour blackout Wednesday

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan — Malacañang has declared April 5 (Tuesday) as a non-working holiday in Pangasinan province to allow Pangasinan residents to celebrate the province’s 436th foundation anniversary, Orpheus Velasco, provincial information officer said on Monday.

The proclamation for the non-working holiday in the province was signed by Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa on March 21.

According to Velasco, this year’s celebration will begin with the traditional thanksgiving Mass at the Sison auditorium on Tuesday morning, to be followed by the blessing and inauguration of the Pangasinan Museum, which will also house the Center for Pangasinan Studies and the Pangasinan Historical and Cultural Commission offices.

In the afternoon, a folk dance competition among local government units will be staged here.

To cap the celebration, a reunion of Asna awardees and a grand ball will be held at the Sison auditorium in the evening.

Asna is an old form of the Pangasinan word “asin (salt),” which refers to the good quality of a man’s character or demeanor.

The award is given to Pangasinenses who have excelled in the fields of government service, community service, arts and culture, medicine, agriculture and aquaculture, mass communications, business and entrepreneurship, law, education, science and technology and sports.

But the holiday will be followed by a 10-hour black out on Wednesday, April 6, affecting parts of Pangasinan from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

The NGCP said the scheduled power interruption would allow work crews to conduct the annual preventive maintenance and testing of a 50MVA power transformer at NGCP’s Labrador Substation, and for the maintenance and corrective activities of the Labrador-Malasiqui 69kV transmission line.  SFM