Boracay task force looking at reopening the island to tourism
MANILA, Philippines— Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat on Wednesday announced that the head of the Boracay Inter-agency task force will visit the island on Thursday to reassess its reopening to tourists.
Puyat said she will be joined by fellow Boracay IATF members Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Roy Cimatu and Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año.
President Rodrigo Duterte has extended the term of the Boracay IATF until May 8, 2021. The task force was created in 2018 through Executive Order 53 to ensure strict implementation of environmental laws and local ordinances to help rehabilitate the island, which Duterte said had become "a cesspool".
“We’re looking at reopening Boracay,” she said in the virtual Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.
The tourism chief said they would particularly check the health protocols in place to determine if the country’s top tourist destination is ready to accept local tourists.
The IATF would visit Aklan's Ciriaco S. Tirol Hospital and review its health and safety protocols.
No reopening without complete health and safety protocols
Meanwhile, Puyat thanked private sector groups like the Filinvest City Foundation, Makati Medical Center Foundation and Aboitiz Foundation for donating reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) machines to local government units that would help ramp up COVID-19 detection in tourist destinations.
“This is what’s needed not only by domestic but also foreign tourists that when they go to a place, it’s safe and there are health protocols in place. We will not open it until these are present,” Puyat concluded.
Days before the national government implemented community quarantine over several parts of the country, the MMC Foundation and its private sector partners said it would implement a Pandemic Preparedness Program “to help bring back tourism confidence here in Boracay from a health security perspective.”
The DOT partnered with the MMC Foundation, MVP Group of Campanies’ Tulong Kapatid or its social responsibility consortium “to improve Boracay Island’s health and communications portfolio.”
They donated around 60 automated sensor hand sanitizers to the hospital, airport, seaport terminals and other strategic places in the island as well as equipment such as satellite phones, mobile data devices and stethoscopes, nebulizer kits, and blood pressure sets, among others.
The initiative is eyed to level up the Ciriaco S. Tirol Hospital from an infirmary to a Level 1 trauma hospital.
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