DAVAO City is ready to welcome 2017 by gathering the most number of people who will be simultaneously blowing party horns in the 14th Davao Torotot Festival New Year's Eve Countdown that will be held at Rizal Park, Davao City.
Around 10,000 participants are expected to join the Torotot Festival organized by the Smart Communications and the Davao City Government, which will kick off with a parade from PLDT on Ponciano Street to People's Park then back to Rizal Park.
City Tourism Office head Gene Rose Tecson said the parade will start at 4 p.m. while the program will start at 6 p.m.
Tecson added that this year's presenter is the Smart Communications while the city is in-charge of logistics.
Smart Communications regional head Arnold Dellosa said in an interview that this year's festival will still have contests on most creative torotot, torotot costume and torotot-inspired cost play where winners will take home P50,000 each.
"Expect the biggest and brightest torotot displays in different shapes, colors, and sizes, as the entries compete for the Most Creative Torotot, Most Creative Torotot Costume and Cost Play Torotot-Inspired Outfit, this year," Dellosa said.
There will also be a Hip-Hop Dance Contest where the winner will take home P50,000 cash prize from 8Telcom, the regional distributor of the Smart Communications.
The Zumba winner would also receive a P15,000 cash prize.
Aside from the competition, Dellosa said, they will have a balloon drop and these balloons contain gifts that will be received by the lucky winners.
Smart will be giving out some 10 LTE cellular phones and 10 LTE pocket Wi-fis.
"We will still have countdown. We also invited local disk jockeys to bring more entertainment to the participants of the Torotot Festival. For this year, we are focusing on talents from Davao, so full-blown Dabawenyo talaga (only)," he said.
Dellosa said they expect participants not only from Davao City but also from neighboring municipal cities and that Smart is doing its promotions for the Torotot Festival via Facebook and blogs.
"We would like to invite everyone to join the Torotot Festival as we would like to showcase how people in Davao City celebrate New Year with a cause [with] zero casualties. We can still celebrate New Year with bliss," Dellosa said.
Dellosa said the essence of the torotot festival is to support the advocacy of the City Government over zero casualties, no smoking and no firecracker/pyrotechnic.
Dellosa added that they will also distribute 1,000 torotots before 12 midnight.
