THE Philippines is set to deploy hundreds of riot police to top holiday island Boracay to keep travelers out and head off potential protests ahead of its six-month closure to tourists, the government said Tuesday.
President Rodrigo Duterte has branded the tiny central island and its world-famous white-sand beach a “cesspool.” He has ordered visitors be kept away from April 26 so facilities to treat raw sewage can be set up and illegal structures torn down.
Meanwhile, the Environment department said Tuesday it will come up with an administrative order establishing a 750-hectare critical habitat for threatened species within Boracay in Aklan province.
Secretary Roy Cimatu met with representatives of Boracay Island resorts and other businesses that have expressed their full support behind the establishment of a critical habitat area.
“We shall establish the Boracay Island critical habitat to protect and conserve the forests and coastal marine areas located in barangays Balabag and Yapak, which serve as the habitat of colonies of flying foxes, the nesting grounds of marine turtles and the nascent corals sprouting in the reef,” Cimatu said.
On Tuesday, authorities laid out a lock-down plan to keep out all foreign and Filipino tourists using more than 600 police, including a 138-member “crowd dispersal unit.”
“In any transition, especially for a drastic action such as this, there is always confusion, uncertainties and low morale,” the regional police director, Chief Supt. Cesar Binag, said at a public forum on the island, which was aired on national television.
“What we did was to identify the sources of confusion, sources of uncertainty and sources of low morale that might result in agitation and eventually into a security issue.”
Boracay residents will be obliged to carry new identification cards and will be banned from boating and night swimming, he said.
Entry to the 1,000-hectare island, located 300 kilometers south of Manila, will be limited to a single small sea port.
The island residents’ new identity cards are expected to be distributed three days before the shutdown, and security forces will conduct a “capability demonstration” next week, Binag said.
Businesses in the area, which had previously lobbied for a phased rehabilitation, have warned that an abrupt shutdown could lead to bankruptcies and job losses for many of the island’s 17,000 hotel, restaurant and other tourism workers, plus some 11,000 construction workers.
The island drew two million visitors last year, earning the country more than a billion dollars in tourism revenue, according to official data.
The abrupt decision to close Boracay has forced hundreds of hotels, restaurants, tour operators and other businesses to cancel bookings, leaving clients fuming.
The threat of closure first emerged in February when Duterte accused Boracay’s businesses of dumping sewage directly into the island’s turquoise waters.
“I will close Boracay. Boracay is a cesspool,” Duterte said in a speech in his southern home city of Davao.
The Duterte administration maintains it is legal for it to deploy police and bar tourists from the island.