Duterte forms Boracay rehab task force

Two weeks after the closure of Boracay to tourists, President Rodrigo Duterte formed an inter-agency task force tasked to ensure the rehabilitation of the holiday destination that is reeling from environmental degradation and unchecked tourism.

Created under Executive Order (EO) 53 issued on Tuesday, the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force is chaired by the environment secretary with the interior and tourism secretaries as vice chairpersons.

Its members are the secretaries of justice, public works, social welfare, labor, and trade as well as the chief operating officer of the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority, chief of the Philippine National Police, the governor of Aklan, and mayor of the municipality of Malay.

Boracay is located on Malay town whose three barangays are currently under state of calamity.  

Among the task force's functions are to ensure that policies on Boracay are consistent with relevant laws, rules and regulations, review and consolidate existing master plans, and formulate, in coordination with stakeholders, an action plan towards sustainable tourism development.

The order also said the task force must coordinate with concerned agencies and local government units the "immediate withholding or revocation of permits or licenses" issued to business that violate environmental laws and local ordinances and "perform other tasks that the President may direct."

"Pursuant to various environmental laws, persons who caused or contributed to environmental damage must be held accountable and must be made to pay at their expense the damage they caused up to the same extent the environment was rendered unfit for utilization and beneficial use," the President said.

Also, the EO imposes a six-month moratorium on the construction and expansion of tourism and other business facilities as well as the issuance of permits and licenses for these establishments.

"The task force shall review and recommend to the President the extension of such moratorium if necessary," the order stated.  

Duterte has branded the island and its world-famous white-sand beach a "cesspool." He had ordered visitors be kept away from April 26 until late October so facilities to treat raw sewage can be set up and illegal structures torn down.

Authorities then laid out a lockdown plan to keep out all foreign and Filipino tourists using more than 600 police, including a 138-member "crowd dispersal unit."

The President has also said that no casino resort would be put up in the popular holiday destination and that he was placing it under land reform, citing a Supreme Court decision in October 2008 that declared Boracay, which it classified as forested and agricultural, as state owned.  —JST, GMA News