PEOPLE POWWOW: Flood in Boracay repels tourists

BY HERBERT VEGO

ON arrival here in Boracay the other day, we had to be extra patient as the driver drove the La Carmela van through knee-deep flood. The water had accumulated from Tuesday’s heavy rain, thus proving what we had already written about – that the so-called island paradise suffers from an obsolete drainage system.

It was not very long ago when this corner also lamented the “greening” of  the beach – what with a long carpet of moss covering the white sand shoreline.

Early yesterday morning, the three of us – Panay News founder/editor-in-chief Danny Fajardo, photo journalist Ric Octavio Jr. and this writer – jogged on the beach, as we had always done each time we were in Boracay.

This time, however, it was not the women in skimpy bikini that caught our attention. It was the large PVC pipes spewing murky flood water into the sea. If only swimmers nearby had seen it, they would have run to the nearest bathroom to rub themselves with soap.

Like the three of us, the foreign and local tourists who have witnessed that glaring evidence of pollution must have vowed never to swim there. Worse, tourists might no longer come back to Boracay.

Unless radical moves are implemented to contain the drainage and pollution problems, tourists would phase Boracay out of their itinerary and go somewhere else.

I remember a particular concern aired by broadcaster Jonathan Cabrera on Radyo Todo-Boracay. He said that when he was still municipal councilor of Malay – the municipality to which Boracay belongs – the then Philippine Tourism Authority (PTA) defrayed a multimillion-peso budget for the modernization of the island’s drainage system.

Where did the money go? I wonder if Atty. Helen Catalbas, our winsome Department of Tourism (DOT) regional director, knows the answer.

As I write now, this vital information comes to mind: PTA has changed its name into Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA), which is harder to remember. Its chief operating officer is Mark Lapid, former Pampanga governor, actor and son of actor-turned-senator Lito Lapid.

While this corner is not insinuating that TIEZA had malversed that budget for Boracay drainage, it looks like it is wasting its funds on senseless projects. TIEZA, a corporate agency attached to the DOT, was the same “animal” that built an expensive P5-million swimming pool in a remote non-tourist zone, a forest in Barangay Dagsa-an, Buenavista, Guimaras – allegedly as requested by Cong. Rahman Nava. A seedling nursery had to be “killed” to build the unnecessary swimming pool.

Dagsa-an being a forest land under the administrative jurisdiction of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Lapid should not have allowed his office to be dragged into that foolish “pool deal,” unless he was hiding behind hidden agenda.

As reported in this paper weeks ago, the one man who had opposed the illegal TIEZA construction of the “dislocated” swimming pool without DENR authority – Jesse Vego, head of the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO) in Guimaras – was sacked. He is now in the proverbial freezer at the regional office. That’s tuwid na daan?

Back to Boracay, it’s just too unfortunate that while Ilonggo entrepreneurs thereat have invested a fortune to build elegant hotels – notably Samuel “Boy” So of La Carmela de Boracay and Henry Chusuey of Boracay Regency – certain government officials do not care.

Talking of La Carmela, it has two swimming pools with a lifeguard where his guests could safely swim and avoid the risk of coliform contamination.

Incidentally, a Boracay resident told us that even Mayor John Yap could not be relied upon to improve Boracay infrastructure, especially the narrow roads that should have been expanded long ago. Widening it today would entail destruction of roadside buildings./PN