Local execs told: Help fix Boracay woes or face arrest

A poor drainage system is being blamed for floods during heavy rains in parts of Boracay. —PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK

TARLAC CITY – Calling them snobs, President Duterte on Wednesday warned Boracay local officials and businessmen that they would be arrested and charged with sedition if they refused to cooperate with the government campaign to fix the island’s pollution problems.

“People there are snobbish. They won’t cooperate,” Mr. Duterte said in his speech at the celebration of the 145th founding anniversary and the second Kanlungan ng Lahi festival of Tarlac province.

In Angeles City on Thursday, former Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr. urged the government to solve Boracay’s problems quietly.

“Boracay is worth $850 million a year in revenue for our people. So we have to be very careful,” said Jimenez, a top advertising executive.

Boracay, known worldwide for its palm-fringed, white sand beaches, azure waters, coral reefs and rare seashells, has a total land area of 1,083 hectares. It consists of Barangay Manoc-Manoc, Balabag and Yapak in  Aklan province’s Malay town.

Last month, Mr. Duterte likened the world-famous tourist destination to a “pit of human waste.”

“You know in Boracay there are three basic issues [in which the] government must intervene. One, is [a] health issue—the right of the government to intervene and interdict to promote public health,” he said.

Public interest

“Second, public interest, because if you leave Boracay as it is, time will come when it is so polluted, it can no longer be of use for the next generation,” he added.

“It is to our interest to preserve its pristine state just like before.”

As a law and order issue, all those not cooperating in the government’s cleanup drive to save the island would be arrested, he said.

“If they refuse to cooperate and they begin to protest, you are at fault there. You were responsible for the damage all these years … I will arrest you all,” Mr. Duterte said.

“And if you put up a fight then I’ll charge you with sedition … preventing [the] government to do what is good for the Filipino people,” he said.

Jimenez welcomed the Duterte administration’s decisiveness.

State of calamity

“Frankly, I wish it had been done more quietly and spare Boracay tourism from taking too much beating,” said Jimenez, who received on Thursday a honorary doctorate in hospitality management from Holy Angel University.

Business owners and local officials said there was no need to declare a state of calamity in Boracay.

Mayor Ciceron Cawaling of Malay town, which has jurisdiction over the island, said the declaration should have valid grounds.

“But if the President issues the declaration, we will follow, especially if it is meant to hasten the cleanup of illegal structures on the island,” Cawaling told the Inquirer.

The mayor pointed out that the reported deterioration of water quality was concentrated along the Bulabog beach area, opposite the long beach where swimming and water sports are concentrated.

The Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act states that a state of calamity is “a condition involving mass casualty and/or major damage to property, disruption of means of livelihoods, roads and normal way of life of people in the affected areas as a result of the occurrence of natural or human-induced hazard.”

Acting Interior Secretary Eduardo Año earlier considered placing the island under a state of calamity and shut down establishments.

Año said the declaration would fast-track the government’s effort to rehabilitate the island.

Confused

Nenette Aguirre-Graf, president of the business group Boracay Foundation Inc. said business owners were getting confused with the direction of the crackdown on violators of environmental laws and regulations.

“Some officials say the island will be closed for 60 days, while others say there will be no shutdown,” Graf said.

She said dealing with the violations of environmental and building laws could be done even without a calamity declaration since business owners were cooperating with government agencies in correcting the violations.

“All of us want to fix Boracay and put everything in order,” she said.

The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Boracay said “closing down Boracay is not the solution to the problems we have been dealing with for a while.”

Labor leaders based in Negros Occidental also asked Mr. Duterte not to close down Boracay because it would displace  19,000 registered workers and their families and 11,000 informal sector workers.

The appeal was included in a resolution issued by Wennie Sancho, General Alliance of Workers Associations secretary general, and Hernane Braza, president of the Philippine Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Workers Union-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines. —WITH REPORTS FROM TONETTE OREJAS, NESTOR P. BURGOS JR. AND CARLA P. GOMEZ