{"id":4618,"date":"2018-04-06T17:14:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T09:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/?p=4618"},"modified":"2018-04-07T12:06:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-07T04:06:22","slug":"philippines-to-close-boracay-island-to-tourists-for-6-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/philippines-to-close-boracay-island-to-tourists-for-6-months\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippines to close Boracay island to tourists for 6 months"},"content":{"rendered":"

MANILA: The Philippines is closing its best-known holiday island Boracay<\/a> to tourists for up to six months over concerns that the once idyllic white-sand resort has become a \u201ccesspool\u201d tainted by dumped sewage, authorities said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the shutdown to start on April 26 for a maximum period of half a year, his spokesman Harry Roque said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoracay is known as a paradise in our nation and this temporary closure is (meant) to ensure that the next generations will also experience that,\u201d Roque told reporters.<\/p>\n

The decision jeopardises the livelihood of thousands employed in the island\u2019s bustling tourist trade that each year serves two million guests and pumps roughly $1 billion in revenue into the Philippine economy.<\/p>\n

Experts said the measure also appeared to contradict the government\u2019s own pro-development policy for the island, including the recent approval of a planned $500-million casino and resort on Boracay.<\/p>\n

The threat of closure first emerged in February when Duterte blasted the tiny island\u2019s hundreds of tourism-related hotels, restaurants and other businesses, accusing them of dumping sewage directly into the sea and turning it into a \u201ccesspool\u201d.<\/p>\n

Authorities said Thursday some businesses were using the island\u2019s drainage system to send untreated sewage into its surrounding turquoise waters.<\/p>\n

The environment ministry says 195 businesses, along with more than 4,000 residential customers, are not connected to sewer lines.<\/p>\n

But within weeks of Duterte lashing out at the local businesses, the Philippines gave the green light for Macau casino giant Galaxy Entertainment to begin construction next year of the casino and resort complex.<\/p>\n

\u2018How will I survive?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe casino contradicts all the efforts now of cleaning up and making sure Boracay goes back to the state where it doesn\u2019t violate its carrying capacity,\u201d former Philippine environment undersecretary Antonio La Vina told AFP.<\/p>\n

He added that the area has seen \u201cunlimited\u201d development because \u201clocal government units and the national government agencies did not do their job of enforcing rules on land use, environmental impact assessment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Authorities said they would use the closure to build new sewage and drainage systems, demolish structures built on wetlands and sue officials and businessmen who violated environmental laws.<\/p>\n

The impact of the decision was already being felt, with domestic airlines announcing they would scale back the number of flights to the jumping off point to the 1,000-hectare island.<\/p>\n

Malaysian low-cost carrier Asia Air has suspended all of its domestic and international flights to Boracay until further notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am really in a quandary on how to handle six months (of closure),\u201d budget hostel manager Manuel Raagas told AFP.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be no income and we have bills to pay so I don\u2019t know how I will survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials said they were willing to take a hard line, saying police and potentially even soldiers would enforce the closure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will issue guidelines on how to bar tourists from entering starting from the port,\u201d interior assistant secretary Epimaco Densing told reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether foreign or local, they will not be allowed to enter the island.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Boracay Foundation Inc, a business association on the island, had asked the government to shut down only those violating environmental laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfair for compliant establishments to be affected by the closure,\u201d its executive director Pia Miraflores told AFP.<\/p>\n

Miraflores said that even before the ban was announced, its shadow had hit some businesses hard in Boracay.<\/p>\n

Some couples who scheduled their weddings on the island up to a year or two in advance had cancelled their reservations even before the ban was announced, she said, with tour agents also besieged with client calls on whether to pursue their planned trips.<\/p>\n

Boracay employs 17,000 people, as well as 11,000 construction workers working on new projects.<\/p>\n

Source: FMT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA: The Philippines is closing its best-known holiday island Boracay to tourists for up to six months over concerns that the once idyllic white-sand resort has become a \u201ccesspool\u201d tainted by dumped sewage, authorities said on Thursday. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the shutdown to start on April 26 for a maximum period of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,3,4,99,1024],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-asia","category-news","category-promotions","category-travel-news","category-travel-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanyangtravel.com.my\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}