One down, one more to go!

We've just concluded the third batch of our series of trainings on the Roll-out of the Generic Procurement Manuals. Venue was at Punta Villa. The turn out of participants was overwhelming - around 285 of them coming from the municipalities in the Provinces of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Guimaras, and Iloilo, the City of Victorias and also from the different Local Water Districts. We had to divide the participants into two groups and the trainors, the six of us namely: Atty. Panes of DILG, Jun Cabahug and Daisylyn Tavarro of COA, Tony Arbis, PBO of Capiz, and Mae Chua and myself from DBM - took turns discussing our assigned topics and even arguing with the eager participants.

The training went on seamlessly, thanks to our hardworking, competent facilitators, Vir Abonador (MBO of Duenas) and Annie Bedonia (MBO of Anilao), as well as our ever pleasing secretariat from the Iloilo Provincial Budget Office headed by PBO Elen Lim and her assistant Daday Depakakibo.

The last batch scheduled on November 14-16 promises to be a special one as two staff from the GPPB will be coming over to observe how we conduct the training. With participants coming from the municipalities of Antique and Negros Occidental and the rest of the water districts in the region, we look forward to an equally bigger turn out and interaction as the recently concluded one. I'll give a brief rundown on this right after the training.