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AS summer steadily rolls on and the sun, sea and sangria set head
for seasonal bouts of excess in Boracay, the globally acclaimed
resort is straining to meet with the demand on its utility services
that has now graduated from terribly worrying to acutely alarming.
Upping the ante was a statement from the
Department of Tourism (DOT)—and the gals and guys at the DOT
should know since they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time
over there—warned that Boracay’s lively travel and leisure
industry, which generates over P10 billion in revenues every year,
could sink in the next two years due to uncontrolled flooding.
One person who believes that the growing
environmental threats to the world-class island-resort of Boracay
are grave but “perfectly solvable,” is Sen. Loren Legarda who
authored the Solid Waste Management Act and the Clean Air Act in the
12th Congress.
“The environmental problems there are
definitely urgent, in that if left unchecked, these could eventually
imperil Boracay’s chief source of revenue—tourism. However, we
must stress that these issues should be addressed right away,” she
said.
The senator—a pro-environment crusader—went
on: “This is simply a question of enforcement and compliance, We
have adequate laws meant precisely to address environmental issues,
such as those now being faced by Boracay. The question is whether
these statutes are being enforced rigorously.”
She singled out the Solid Waste Management Act,
which sets national standards for waste management and provides
guidelines for volume reduction via minimization measures that
include recycling, reuse, recovery and composting before collection,
treatment and disposal in suitable dump sites.
The law retains with local governments the
primary task of enforcing waste management. However, garbage control
projects involving national agencies, the private sector and
communities are encouraged.
Under the law, open dumping is to be phased out
in favor of sanitary landfills. The open burning of solid waste is
banned, and it is illegal to collect non-segregated trash. The law
also mandates the phase out of non-recyclable as well as
non-biodegradable consumer packaging materials.
Legarda believes the challenge now is for all
agencies and establishments, in Boracay and other parts of the
country, to ensure adequate compliance with these regulations.
She added: “It is easy to blame this agency or
that sector for Boracay’s environmental problems. However, it has
become apparent that the island’s infrastructures are simply being
overwhelmed by the push of foreign and local tourists.”
The DOT regional director Edwin Trompeta said
heavy rains during the holiday season caused wastewater channels and
drainpipes to overflow onto the resort’s celebrated white beach.
He said the flooding was the worst experienced
on the island, with at least 30 percent of the beach area and a
number of commercial districts severely affected.
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While some head for the sun in Boracay, others
are seeking permanently sunnier climes in the United States. A total
of 4,686 Filipinos took the United States licensure examination for
nurses for the first time from January to March 2008, indicating
they wanted to seek employment in America.
The number of Filipino who took the National
Council Licensure Examination administered by the US National
Council of State Boards of Nursing and implicitly sought jobs in the
US in the first quarter actually decreased by 390, or more than
seven percent, compared to a year ago. A total of 5,076 Filipinos
took the examination in the same period in 2007, according to lone
Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago, who has been pushing for reforms
to build up Philippine nursing education.
The 2007 figures translate to a daily average of
around 60 Filipino nurses seeking to practice in the US alone.
“Many young Filipinos aspire to become nurse
practitioners because of the lure of lucrative overseas employment.
We must protect this hope and dream by seeing to it that flunkey
schools and reviewers are shut down,” Santiago said.
Nursing has become the preferred course of a
growing number of college enrollees. The CHED’s Office of Policy,
Planning, Research and Information sees almost half a million or
497,000 students taking up the nursing course in the school year
2008 to 2009.
Next to nursing, the second most favored course
is hotel and restaurant management, with some 134,600 projected
students; followed by computer science with 100,700 expected
students.
rjottings@yahoo.com
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