spouse of scouse

I'll start by saying I'm woefully ignorant about the Philippines. But this story caught my eye.

The Philippines is to deploy hundreds of riot police to the holiday island Boracay to keep out tourists and head off potential protests ahead of its six-month closure to visitors.

Rodrigo Duterte has described the tiny central island and its white-sand beach as a “cesspool”. The Philippine president ordered visitors to be kept away from 26 April to enable facilities to treat raw sewage to be set up and illegal structures to be torn down
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...sspool-boracay

I was wondering what local and expat people think about this. If the island's in as bad shape as Duterte suggests, then a clean up sounds like a good thing. But what about the thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on the island's tourism? Is the government going to give them financial help?

mikemike

Boracay has been a cesse pit for many years. Too many of the ''employed '' are working in places that should never had planning permission so yes they are going to be victims. in the Philippines it is a birth right to build where you like and lose your employment, so no change there then. What made me laugh is that there are very few units anywhere in the Philippines that have either mains water coming in , let alone sewage systems going out!!. Most water comes from wells drilled into the water table that may be soaking up human excrement filtering into the ground.

Delivery of water via a mains system is now coming into the main urban areas but it is not potable drinking water.

Duterte could have applied his Boracay standard to the whole of the Philippines and the country would get shut down!!

What he needs to do is ensure that the shut down works, Too many times they never follow through and it is ''as you were''.

Welkome 2 da Pilippines where truth and fiction are hard to see apart.

spouse of scouse

Thanks Mikemike, most interesting

Stokkevn

I live a couple of hours drive from Boracay and have not bothered to go there in about 5 years as it was just becoming toxic. The shutdown will be the usual chaos, they ( gov ) are still trying to work out how to employ those that will be out of work. A few foreign owned companies have already started a sell off of assets, while thanking the Philippine system that says that foreigners can not own land so they are just walking away. One South African is moving to Malaysia and a Brit I know is heading to Vietnam to start up their businesses there. Even the DOT chief says the the work needs to be done quickly, but nothing about properly.

My guess is that in 6 months time there will be a reopening ceremony where a lot of the island workers have found alternative employment and some of the businesses do not reopen. In Roxas City some seafood companies have already said they will shut down as most of their business is with Boracay and the Aklan Electric Company has already said that they are putting up the electricity price by 25% to all it's customers to cover the losses of a shut down Boracay.

It's More Fun in the Philippines

Bealinehx

I first went to Boracay in 1999 when it was indeed a tropical paradise. The local airport Caticlan only had two flights per day from Manila and one of those was an 8 seater, including the pilot!
Sadly 5 years later it was already being overexploited and I shortened my planned 5 day stay to 2. The real losers in Boracay are the genuine islanders. There is too much dodgy money being laundered there. A very sad situation. Not convinced that President Duterte's action will succeed in the long run.