The May­or of Diego Mar­tin says J’Ou­ver’t and Car­ni­val like cel­e­bra­tions will not be a fea­ture of a month-long cel­e­bra­tion to com­mem­o­rate the bor­ough’s first an­niver­sary.

In­stead, May­or Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er ex­plained that cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties aimed at en­gag­ing the burgess­es, as well as, com­pe­ti­tions will be among a list of events tak­ing place. Glas­gow-Warn­er re­vealed the plans on Sat­ur­day fol­low­ing an in­ter­faith ser­vice to com­mence the oc­ca­sion.

“A lot of peo­ple have been ask­ing about the Car­ni­val and the J’Ou­vert our coun­cil has not tak­en that ap­proach with our first bor­ough day cel­e­bra­tion. Our aim is that at the end of this cel­e­bra­tion, peo­ple of the re­gion have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what we do as a bor­ough, what we do as a cor­po­ra­tion and learn more about the beau­ties with­in the Diego Mar­tin bor­ough.”

Among those in at­ten­dance dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s ser­vice were Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga.

The Diego Mar­tin May­or in­di­cat­ed that the events would be seek­ing to ed­u­cate res­i­dents and aim, at the same time, to help those in need.

“One of our events is our his­tor­i­cal videog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion where res­i­dents are of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sub­mit a 90 sec­ond video high­light­ing his­tor­i­cal sites with­in the bor­ough and based on the com­ments there are so many peo­ple say­ing they did not know cer­tain things ex­ist­ed.

“There will al­so be an out­reach pro­gramme which is near and dear to the coun­cil’s heart be­cause of the fact that we are con­sid­ered the low-hang­ing fruit as peo­ple come to us for grants, as­sis­tance, any­thing and we col­lab­o­rate with agen­cies and through these out­reach pro­grammes we are try­ing to help our res­i­dents,” she ex­plained.

The May­or al­so said that on Fri­day June 14, hun­dreds will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the mil­i­tary pa­rade which she an­tic­i­pat­ed would be a ma­jor at­trac­tion.

Last year a bill was passed el­e­vat­ing the sta­tus of Diego Mar­tin and Siparia to bor­oughs.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi said the move has since in­ject­ed ex­cite­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in both ar­eas.

“Diego Mar­tin and Siparia have come alive and there­fore the vi­sion of the Prime Min­is­ter in in­sist­ing we con­tin­ue, we move for­ward is part of what we are cel­e­brat­ing here to­day,” the min­is­ter said.

Last Fri­day, Siparia be­gan its an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions with the mil­i­tary pa­rade.