BAUKO, Mountain Province – Mayor Abraham B. Akilit urged future leaders of the municipality to be visionary, passionate, innovative and creative for them to sustain the gains of the present administration in bringing the town to greater heights.
Akilit, who will be ending his three terms as the town’s local chief executive, stated that whoever will possess these desired qualities of future leaders will enjoy his support in the upcoming May 9, 2022 synchronized national and local elections.
However, he has yet to decide on his future in politics as he is still inclined to continue working on the implementation of his programs, projects and activities that had brought noticeable developments in the different parts of the municipality.
The local chief executive added that future leaders of the municipality should value the importance of teamwork, unity, cooperation and solidarity in working for the benefit of the greater majority of the populace without compromising the good state of the town’s environment while working towards the implementation of the appropriate development projects.
According to him, Bauko is rich in worthy tourist destinations that should be taken cared of to be able to sustain the growth of the local tourism industry which will provide decent jobs and additional sources of livelihood for the populace.
Mayor Akilit underscored that talks on the elections is inevitable but what should be discussed by the electorate are the qualities of future leaders who will have to sustain the gains of the previous and present administrators to allow the municipality to further improve its classification.
Bauko is the biggest municipality in terms of population with some over 34,000 inhabitants where it is composed of 22 barangays spread over the Mount Data plateau.
Mayor Akilit has been staunch advocate for the preservation and protection of the environment which he enhanced during his tenure as regional manager of the Cordillera office of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA-CAR) until he was elected as the town’s mayor in 2013 where he continued the same and had been setting the example for such advocacy.
Aside from empowering residents to value the good state of the environment and to sustain the efforts to preserve and protect the same, Akilit had been instrumental in introducing reforms in the local government that paved the way for the improved status of civil servants and allowed concerned offices to effectively and efficiently perform their mandate in charting the overall growth and development of the municipality.
He stipulated that because Bauko is the gateway of the central Cordillera, it must to project itself as a mystical town rich with majestic and towering mountains and refreshing waterfalls and rivers apart from the numerous vegetable terraces carved on the mountain slopes.
The mayor, who is also a civic leader and an accomplished professional, wants. the gains to be left behind and not to be simply wasted but instead aggressively pursued, improved and re-visited for the benefit of all generations wanting to make Bauko their home for the rest of their lives. By HENT