The Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas sent me an official statement that Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Lloyd Dino wants to convene hotel and resort owners in Mactan Island and other tourist destinations in Cebu to discuss measures that can prevent another Boracay situation. First of all, let me point out that at least the national government officials are going out of their way to gather the people in the hotel and resort industry here in Cebu to help each other before things become uncontrollable.
However, I don't think that Cebu will go the way of Boracay in the sense that most of the properties in Cebu are not state-owned, which is why the president can close Boracay. But I also believe that many hotels or resorts may have violated environmental laws, or worse, violated the three-meter or 20-meter easement on the shoreline. This is why it is good to get an inventory of those establishments that may have violated DENR rules.
Mind you, I recently wrote an article exposing privately-owned beach houses fronting the shoreline in the town of Dalaguete in order to draw the attention of the Environmental Management Bureau but it seems they are turning a blind eye to the blatant violation of our shoreline easement rules. I certainly hope DENR gets its act together and inspects the houses in Dalaguete.
Back to the official statement of Michael Dino, he said: "In Boracay, I witnessed the price of human negligence and greed. Instead of pristine beaches and white sands, what you can see now are bags of dirt, piles of pipes for the sewerage, residents' voluntary demolishing structures within easements. No more tourists, no more business."
I haven't been back to Boracay perhaps in the last 10 years, but I still recall that when I swam at the beach, I ended up having a strange itch. Later, I learned that it must have been due to the high levels of coliform. But today, Boracay has been overbuilt and its roads are as narrow as ever. So closing Boracay is the best thing that happened to this island paradise!
At this point, I certainly hope Dino will be able to gather all the hotel and resort owners from all over the island of Cebu. Let me suggest that since Cebu is a huge island, he should split the meeting between north and south so it won't be too large and unwieldy. If he needs the help of the private sector, I'm sure that the Cebu Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. and the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. and the Cebu Business Club are more than willing to help facilitate this momentous meeting with the stakeholders.
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Since, I didn't go to the International Eucharistic Congress Convention Center to hear what Pres. Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte had to say about Labor Day, let me just tell you what he told a press conference in Davao City the other day, that labor ties between the Philippines and Kuwait are over. It was indeed a breaking news announcement, which no one could have ever predicted.
President Duterte said that he has set aside P5 billion to take care of the returning workers. I'm sure that not all of the 260,000 Overseas Filipino Workers will return home, especially those who work under kindhearted families, and I'm sure that there are thousands of them who want to stay. But for the rest, working in Kuwait means they no longer enjoy the protection of bilateral labor ties between the Philippine government and the Kuwaiti government.
For the record, of the more than 260,000 OFWs in Kuwait around 170,000 of these are employed as domestic helpers. How many domestic helpers will return home? We will certainly find out in the weeks to come. I'm sure that the P5 billion funds that Pres. Duterte is preparing won't be enough if those workers from Kuwait decide to come home and not seek work in other countries.
I presume that this P5-billion emergency fund will go towards repatriation costs and welfare payments once they are back home. They won't have any jobs waiting for them when they get home, so they will surely need government support.