‘No laws yet to enforce Boracay tourist cap’ – DENR, Aklan execs

The government does not have a law to use as basis in enforcing limits on the number of people entering Boracay, environment and local officials admitted on Wednesday.

Aklan Gov. Florencio Miraflores said the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF) was still studying how it could come up with the legal mandate that would impose regulations on the “carrying capacity” of the island.

“We’re still looking in that direction. Indeed, there must be some legal mandate on this, so we’re talking about … how to be able to control the influx of people in Boracay,” he said.

Six-month cleanup

The government is set to reopen Boracay on Oct. 26 following a six-month cleanup and rehabilitation. Once it reopens, the BIATF wants to limit the entry of people into the island.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources defines carrying capacity as “the maximum number of individuals of a species that can be sustained by an environment to sustain that same number in the future.”

It was not immediately known if it would be considered a misdemeanor to sneak into the island.

Miraflores, a BIATF member representing the province of Aklan, said the group was fine-tuning the monitoring system to enforce the tourist cap, which would be set by the BIATF. —Melvin Gascon