CAGAYAN DE ORO—Tourism officials have invited organizers of an international beauty contest here after its contestant from New Zealand left in a huff, complaining of “shabby treatment.”
Department of Tourism Region 10 director Catalino Chan said they had invited Mylene Miranda, 43, organizer of Mister and Miss Pan Continental 2015 Global Pageant after one of the contestants, Miss New Zealand Nicole Harding, left Sunday.
Chan said they had also invited local organizers, Sheryl Macale, manager of Radyo Natin station, and a certain Lourdes Stanley to see if all the allegations by Harding are true.
Harding left Cagayan de Oro together with Miss USA, Ashley Clark, last Sunday citing security concerns and lack of organization of the pageant.
Harding said she thought her trip to Cagayan de Oro was a dream opportunity that turned out to be a nightmare.
Harding, a nursing student, accused the organizers as “a Mickey Mouse outfit” that has put the contestants in danger.
She arrived in the Philippines on Nov. 18 adding the organizers promised all the contestants they would shoulder all the costs including their accommodation in five-star hotels.
Arriving in Cagayan de Oro, one of the pageant’s venues, Harding said they were taken to a different hotel “in the middle of a red light district” because the organizers had some booking problems with their appointed hotels.
“They took us to this hotel, which, in New Zealand, I would liken to a prison cell. There were guys out the front with machine guns and dogs,” Harding wrote in her Facebook page.
Harding said at the hotel, the organizers assigned three contestants to a room with one double bed. She said the organizers put out a slim mattress on the floor and complained the room was “crawling with bugs.”
“We met with the Cagayan de Oro governor and he said it was not safe to be here, this place is more unsafe than Afghanistan. He told us, where we were, they kidnap people and use them as sex slaves, it’s the number one place for human trafficking,” Harding narrated.
Harding believes the pageant organizers were trying to make money by carrying out a low-budget event.
She said she left Cagayan de Oro heeding the travel advisory of New Zealand which put the entire island of Mindanao a “high-risk area.”
Harding’s complaints appeared in news websites in New Zealand and Australia.
Chan said they noticed the organizers were “disorganized” in handling big events.
“We never received any official letters from them. When we met them we told them they should not expect the LGUS and DoT to spend for them,” he said.