EXPECTING a massive flock of devotees, Manila Mayor Joseph E. Estrada ordered on Tuesday the early preparations for the upcoming Traslación, or the Black Nazarene’s movement from one place to another commonly called as procession, on January 9 next year.
The mayor said barangay officials in Quiapo should start planning so as to ensure that the world-renowned religious activity would be hassle-free.
“This early, we should start drawing up plans and contingencies, and this must start in the grassroots level, in the barangays. The earlier, the better,” Estrada noted.
According to Estrada, the city’s interagency peace and order council, as well as concerned national government agencies, will depend on the inputs to be provided by the communities to formulate various security and traffic plans for the annual event.
On December 8 16 barangays have scheduled a general meeting, along with Quiapo Church officials and other stakeholders. They partly comprise Zone 30, which covers a total of 36 barangays.
“We have started discussing among ourselves what we shall do for the upcoming Traslación and for the January 1 procession,” Barangay 306 Chairman Joey Jamisola said in an interview.
Among the matters to be discussed in the meeting, he bared, are the persisting problem on ambulant and sidewalk vendors, the condition of the roads where the procession will pass, clean-up operations and security.
In the previous years, the barangay executive pointed out that the communities in Quiapo have been providing assistance to the Manila Traffic and Parking Bureau, Department of Engineering and Public Works, Department of Public Services and other concerned City Hall offices regarding the pre- and post-Traslación road-clearing and clean-up operations, and traffic management.
“First of which would be the vendors,” said Jamisola, who was designated as the chairman of the 16-barangay district. “We’re now asking them to cooperate because most of them will be temporarily relocated to give way to the procession and, of course, they should not litter.”
To avoid the worshippers from getting injured, he said the barangays, in cooperation with the police, would implement certain precautionary measures.
These include the ban on selling street foods that use sticks like barbecue, kwek-kwek (fried quail eggs) and banana cue, among others, which have caused injuries and inconvenience to bare-foot devotees in the past, the barangay official said.
Jamisola has asked his fellow officers to look for improperly covered or open manholes, unpaved road spaces and unattended excavations in their communities, particularly along or near the procession routes, so city engineers will be able to act on them early on.
This year’s Traslación lasted 22 hours and 19 minutes—the longest in its annual history. It, likewise, was record-breaking in terms of the number of devotees who joined at 3.5 million, based on the estimates of the Manila Police District.
Nonetheless, the festivity left 12 truckloads, or 69.43 tons, of garbage in the street—also a new record, according to City Hall officials.
Overall, the Traslación was relatively peaceful, although a total of 1,339 devotees suffered minor injuries. Only seven “major” cases were reported as per the Philippine National Red Cross.