Spearheaded by the Municipal Planning and Development Office, the Local Government Unit of Binalonan on May 24-25 conducted a two-day Visioning – Planning Process Workshop for the updating of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) of Binalonan at the Rock Garden Tent.

Municipal officials, LGU department heads some barangay captains of Binalonan and selected municipal employees from different departments and heads of CSOs and NGOs attended the workshop facilitated by the Project Team from the University of the Philippines School of Urban and Regional Planning in Diliman.

“The CLUP is due for updating to cope with the fast pacing development of the town,” said Engineer Elizabeth Aquino, head of MPDC. “Actually, this is the 2nd phase of a series of workshops for the CLUP. The first one was the Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment (CDRA) held last April.”

The participants were grouped into 5 representing the social, economic, infrastructure, environmental and institutional sectors.

The participants in each of the sector were asked to identify the strengths and opportunities of the municipality and their impact to come up with the vision of the town. The inward and outward looking components were specifically pinpointed. Each of the group presented their outputs for discussion and critiquing.

During the workshop, Congressman-elect Ramon V. Guico III came and inspired the participants.
He mentioned among others that the updating of the CLUP is a must to maximize opportunities to improve the towns’ competitive standing in Region I. He gave his piece of mind on the vision statement generated from the participants and further gave suggestions on the developmental issues and concerns to include in the planning.

Engineer Aquino concluded that the results of the outputs presented will be further assessed and evaluated , thus another workshop will be conducted with the UP- SURP Project team.