Why still no charges for Boracay mess?

Three nagging questions need answering on the eve of Boracay’s six-month closure for rehabilitation:

(1) Why have no charges been filed till now against the regional and provincial officials responsible for the mess?

It’s been two months since President Rody Duterte pictured the waters around the tourist paradise as a “dysentery cesspool.” The Departments of Environment, Local Government, and Tourism have since verified gross legal breaches. One in every two resorts, diners, and shops are flouting environment and sanitation laws. They’re too many: 2,142 businesses in all with no sewerage, spewing waste straight to the waters, and encroaching on beachfronts, wetlands and roadways. Not yet included are violators of building standards and safety, unsanitary food handlers, habitual litterbugs, and air and noise polluters.

Those flourished for the past 35 years because abetted by government crooks. Environment officials ignored, likely for bribes, the requisite Environment Impact Surveys and Environment Compliance Certificates before the erection of any structure. Environment Sec. Roy Cimatu saw that a resort owner had trespassed an adjacent mangrove forest, built cabañas and concreted a giant jacuzzi atop a coral rock. Health and sanitation inspectors played blind to the filthy resort kitchens and food stalls, stinky toilets, and smoke-belchers. Hundreds of sooty, clanky tricycles swarm the main and side streets. The franchise for each is a stunning P700,000. Tourism Sec. Wanda Teo shuddered at the sight of trash, including junked refrigerators, on the sidewalks of the country’s foremost travel destination. A succession of Aklan provincial governors allegedly misdeclared annual collections of environment fees from tourists. From two million visitors paying P75 each last year alone, only P91 million is accounted for instead of P150 million total. Officials of Malay municipality and Boracay island’s three barangays allowed squatting by both rich and poor, observed Local Government Sec. Ed Año. Six of nine wetlands are crowded with shanties, malls, private schools, dormitories, restaurants, and water sport rental shops.

Tourism Asst. Sec. Ricky Alegre declared three weeks ago that dozens of present and past officials from year 2000 will be charged. It must be done before the May 14 barangay elections, he said, to avoid suspicions of partisan politics. What’s with the delay?

(2) What is this “right-of-way problem” that the Dept. of Public Works and Highways is talking about?

A report in The STAR last Sunday quoted DPWH Western Visayas Director Wenceslao Leaño about it. He said that even before Duterte decided to shut down Boracay, they already had P50 million to pave a 600-meter gap of the circumferential road. But that they could not proceed “because of road R-O-W-issues.” Leaño also talked about repairing six kilometers of drainage. “We would finish in six months if there’s no problem with road rights-of-way, and if the DENR will give us the go-signal to demolish everything,” he said.

Rights-of-way pertain only to private property. The Supreme Court declared ten years ago that Boracay is state-owned. The island is inalienable forestland, not for private sale or subdivision. The original settlers and subsequent establishments are there only because tolerated. If they interfere with government development works then they cannot invoke R-O-W.

(3) Is it true that a casino operator continues to buy land in Boracay for future construction?

That’s what the Malay town mayor’s executive assistant Rowen Aguirre averred in a separate report in The STAR also last Sunday. He said that Leisure and Resorts World Corporation continues to negotiate with establishment owners to buy property. That’s in addition to the 23 hectares it already holds in Sitio Sugod, Barangay Manoc-Manoc, not far from beach-party place Station One. That’s strange. The government’s gaming regulator did grant LRWC a provisional license last March, at the height of the Boracay to-do. The Malay municipal council did issue seven months prior a Certificate of No Objection to any casino. And LRWC did confirm that it is in partnership in Boracay with Macau casino giant Galaxy Entertainment Group. But when the public howled against the casino project, Duterte put his foot down. He said he would rather give Boracay away to farmers. (There are no listed agrarian reform-applicants in the island.) The casino can relocate elsewhere, he added. Secretaries Cimatu and Teo felt relieved. They oppose any casino because it would ruin their plan to limit Boracay to its estimated human carrying capacity of only 30,000, at any time, from the present 75,000.

Isn’t that the end of the story? Would Duterte risk being called a hypocrite just for one casino? Will the owner of LRWC risk Duterte’s reputation, despite being considered for the President’s party’s senatorial ticket in 2019?

Boracay is not only Southeast Asia’s holiday island to be closed. Maya Bay in Thailand, described by The Economist as the “rubble-strewn backpacker getaway” depicted in the film “The Beach,” will be closed for four months starting June to recover from 4,000 visitors a day. Last year a six-kilometer stretch of Bali, Indonesia, was declared a “garbage emergency.” If resort owners do not voluntarily clean up, swathes of Puerto Galera in Mindoro, Coron in Palawan, and Panglao in Bohol also face shutdowns for rehab.

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