A foreign tourist helps pick up trash at a section of a beach on Boracay Island. (File photo by LYN RILLON / Philippine Daily Inquirer)
ILOILO CITY — A bill seeking to create a council that will take over the management and protection of Boracay has been filed in the Senate.
Authored by Sen. Franklin Drilon, Senate Bill 1765 – (An Act Creating the Boracay Island Council – was filed on March 20 and is pending before the Senate committees on environment and natural resources and on local government.
The Boracay Island Council (BIC) will be created under the Office of the President. It will be composed of the secretaries of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Tourism (DOT) and Department of Justice.
The other members would include the administrator of the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority, director of the Land Management Bureau, administrator of the Land Registration Authority and the chair of the National Commission on Indigenous peoples.
Representatives from local government units will come from the Aklan provincial government, Malay municipal government and the three villages on the island.
The private sector will be represented through nongovernment organizations or community organizations.
The BIC will “take over the management, development, regulation, protection and maintenance of the island, including its coastal resources and marine biodiversity.”
In the introduction of the bill, Drilon said Boracay, the country’s prime tourist destination, was in a “state of disrepair” and facing several problems, including an inadequate sewage system, flooding, excessive algae, contamination of the waters, and deterioration of the coral reefs.
“The situation calls for urgent and extreme measures to address the crisis,” Drilon said.
“It is apparent that Boracay has suffered from the governmental system currently in place. It has failed to provide the island with protection and preservation that it needs,” he added.
Boracay – which is composed of the three villages of Yapak, Balabag and Manoc-Manoc – is part of Malay, a first class municipality in Aklan province.
The 1,032-hectare island was among the place classified as a tourist zone under Presidential Proclamation 1801 issued in 1978 by then President Ferdinand Marcos.
With enactment of the Local Government Code in 1991, government power was devolved to local government units.
Meanwhile, an inter-agency task force composed of the DENR, DILG and DOT have blamed local officials for the failure to enforce environmental laws and regulations and regulate the development of the island.
On the other hand, local officials have also blamed national government agencies for lack of support, especially for critical infrastructure projects that are beyond the resources of the local government. /atm