The interagency Task Force Boracay will cancel all business permits, including environmental compliance certificates (ECCs), of businesses operating on Boracay Island in preparation for its reopening on October 26.
Closed for six months starting April 26, Boracay Island is the country’s top tourist destination, and the first to undergo massive rehabilitation.
“Secretary [Roy A.] Cimatu wants to start with a clean slate. Since Boracay was closed, he wants us to review all ECCs. The ECCs were, in effect, suspended. What we will do is check the compliance of all establishments. For those [who] comply, we will just lift the suspension of the ECCs,” Jonas R. Leones, the DENR’S undersecretary for policy, planning, international affairs and foreign-assisted projects, said.
The DENR chief, Leones said, wants to start with a clean slate by canceling all business permits and require businesses to apply for such permits, and separate permits to operate from the local government of Malay, Aklan, and the ECC from the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
He added that those establishments built on the wrong place, either on lime forestland or wetland, would likely lose their ECCs for good.
A DENR document which lays out a plan to rehabilitate Boracay showed there are more than 2,600 business establishments operating on Boracay, and estimated total population of around 34,000 in some 700 households.
Tourists arriving on the island at any given time are estimated to reach 22,000.
The tourism industry in Boracay employs a total of 17,208 individuals based on records of the municipality of Malay.
With the tourism industry as the main source of income and livelihood of the people on the island and in mainland Malay, hotels and restaurants, and other service-related industries, including transportation, rely heavily on tourist arrivals.
Last year the municipality of Malay generated around P400 million from various fees, while the provincial government of Aklan generated revenues of P150 million. In 2014, according to the Department of the Interior and Local Government, tourism revenues attributed to Boracay reached P27 billion.
Hundreds of business establishments have been found violating various rules. Various DENR documents revealed the massive violation of environmental and other rules in Boracay.
A total of 679 residential, commercial and mixed residential-commercial buildings violated the road-easement rule, 161 individuals and businesses were identified as illegal forest occupants; 195 businesses were “not connected” to sewer lines, and hundreds more were issued notice of violation of Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, raising question as to why they were issued ECCs and Forest Land-use Agreement for Tourism, if indeed they have one.
To recall, President Duterte had ordered the rehabilitation of the pollution-challenged Boracay, an island paradise in Malay, Aklan, which he tagged as a “cesspool.”
To fast-track the rehabilitation, Task Force Boracay led by Cimatu recommended the closure for six months. Two months into the island’s closure to tourism activities, the DENR chief said water quality in the white-sand beach of Boracay has greatly improved, finally removing the cesspool tag.
Prior to its closure, there was a freeze on new construction projects while the DENR-EMB ceased accepting ECC application for projects on Boracay.