OPAV to assist Malay LGU to safely reopen Boracay tourism

 MINERVA BC NEWMAN

CEBU CITY -- The Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas (OPAV) assured its commitment to Malay mayor Frolibar Bautista to help the town reopen its Boracay Island to tourists.  Boracay is part of the municipality of Malay.

In a meeting on May 16 with OPAV Undersecretary Anthony Gerard Gonzales, Malay mayor Bautista, some business officials, IATF-Visayas Gen. Mel Feliciano and officials from the Department of Health (DOH-7), the group saw the need for LGUs to adopt policies that will help their localities open up and reopen their economies, more than a year into the pandemic.

“Boracay is a tourism jewel of this country. I don’t see any reason we can’t manage the situation of the island. The national government is there support. We are willing to work with you,” Gonzales told Malay officials.

Gonzales pointed out that Boracay drew about two million tourists in 2019. It reopened October last year and tourists started to trickle in. However, with the suspension of air travel from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Boracay has become a ghost town.

“If we can learn to live with COVID-19, we can open Boracay to tourists again,” he added.

Gonzales went on that the national government is committed to help LGUs, particularly the municipality of Malay, to help them better plan how they can safely reopen the island and manage the COVID-19 situation there.

For instance, Cebu was the first province in the Visayas to reopen its borders to local tourists even amid the lingering threat of COVID-19.  Gonzales believes that this can also be applied in Boracay, for as long as systems and processes of COVID-19 community response are in place.

Tourism for instance, can remain “business as usual” if local leaders can very well manage any possible surge in COVID-19 cases.  He urged local chief executives to be more forward looking and embrace the fact that communities now have to live with COVID to be able to restore livelihoods of the people.

Strictly implementing border controls and lockdown mechanisms no longer applies today as government and private leaders should have now learned about how to better manage the pandemic.

 Gonzales said that local governments must think about how they can restore the economies of their localities to prevent further incidents of hunger, crime and suicide as among the negative social effects of the pandemic.

OPAV’s meeting with local officials of the Malay municipal government took place during the culmination of the rollout of the Visayas COVID-19 Vaccination Operations Center (VVOC) Manual in the three regions of Visayas. (Photos: OPAV)