National Rover Moot in Maasin City on October 22-28

By BONG PEDALINO
October 13, 2010

MAASIN CITY, Southern Leyte  –  It’s official.  The gathering of adult scouts nationwide has been finally scheduled this month, on October 22-28, 2010.

The activity, which will be held at the sprawling Danao Forest Park here, will also be the occasion for One Visayas Boy Scouts jamboree.

This was revealed on Tuesday by Mayor Maloney Samaco on the sidelines of the pinning of ranks ceremony for CAFGUs into enlisted army reservists at the city gym.

Samaco said he expected some 5,000 visiting scouts, boys and adults, to converge to this week-long event, which was set to happen in the Scouting Month of October.

Told that the dates covered with the holding of barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections on October 25, Samaco said the coincidence had to be accepted since no other dates were allowed by the Department of Education (DepEd) as these days have no classes, being a semestral break.

In the city-paid, block-time radio program on Wednesday, Samaco disclosed he would allow the participating Rover Scouts to get back to their respective barangays to vote on election day.

Samaco said he also expected Vice-President Jejomar Binay, the National President of the Boy Scouts, to be around to grace the opening ceremonies on October 22, a Friday.

Since last year, the City government has been preparing for the holding of the rover scouts meet, seeing the activity as an occasion to showcase the city’s tourism potentials and boost the local economy.

It was first scheduled in May but was put-off because of the automated polls, then moved to October since there was widespread talk the barangay and SK polls would be postponed.