A team of consultants consisting of tourism planners and heritage specialists are here in the city set to craft a master plan creating a tourism traffic for Barangay Mintal.

Pre-war Mintal was considered as Davao City’s Little Tokyo, where the Japanese have settled and built infrastructures like hospital, schools and cemetery.

Relics from the Japanese have been found in the village as early as the 1900s.

The project has a P120-million budget from the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TEAZA), an attached agency of the Department of Tourism.

Representatives of the consultancy company Berkman International Inc. have been visiting Barangay Mintal’s heritage, historical, cultural and man-made attractions and possible destinations.

“There is a need to have a first-hand knowledge of the typical Mintal tourism experience,” City Tourism Chief Regina Rosa Tecson said.

To gather some more information about Mintal, the team of planners on Tuesday initiated a public consultative meeting and workshop.

The activity aimed to collect stories about the village from families who lived in the area before, during, and after the Japanese occupation.

The objective was to trace back history, and identify landmarks that have heritage importance.

Barangay Captain Ramon Bargamento II has proposed the “revival and rehabilitation of his barangay’s rich historical resources being declared as Japanese Heritage Area in 2009.”

“It started with 20 million, now it has ballooned to 120 million,” Bargamento said. CIO