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SOME four decades after our first visit to Palawan, we were able to
revisit it the other week, right in the midst of Typhoon Frank, that
had us stranded there for a day. The occasion was the
familiarization tour extended by the Philippine Airlines (PAL) to
selected Cebu media workers. The target: to assess Puerto Princesa
and Palawan many years after the Dos Palmas resort kidnapping by the
Abu Sayyaf of 21 foreign tourists.
The first time I visited Palawan was in the late
l960s when then-Sen. Manuel Manahan, chairman of the Senate
committee on cultural minorities, invited me to go with him to visit
Palawan’s natives. We stayed overnight at the Iwahig Penal Colony
on the way to Brooke’s Point riding on a military ten-wheeler part
of the way, and a pump boat the rest of the way. There was no road
yet that connected Brooke’s Point with the capital town.
This time around, the trip was to see how
Palawan is doing its thing as a tourist’s destination. It is the
direction towards economic recovery from the slump it suffered with
the tragic kidnapping of the tourists that included the Burnham
missionary couple about seven years ago. Rep. Abraham Kahlil Mitra,
son of the late Speaker Ramon Mitra, hosted a dinner at his ranch
for the PAL-organized familiarization tour group.
“Palawan has only about a million
inhabitants,” the 38-year-old second district representative said.
“And it is only in the past three years that it has begun to rise
again after the Dos Palmas incident. The province is sparsely
populated, and lacks the needed infrastructure to back up its
envisioned economic development.” Mitra revealed that his province
recently received P1.2 billion as its share of the Malampaya oil
fields.
“And all that is going to infrastructure
projects. The President has agreed to use it to fund the coastal
road around the province. He said that up to this moment, all
Palawan’s towns are not yet accessible from Puerto Princesa, the
provincial capital, by land. In some towns, pump boats are used by
the tourists and domestic travelers to access their destinations. In
fact, the provincial capital itself does not even have a single
taxicab.”
Except for four new hotels and half a dozen
malls and supermarkets to serve its 200 thousand or so population,
Puerto Princesa is really just starting to develop itself as a
tourist destination. Mitra said that they are trying their level
best to catch up with the rest of the country. One of Palawan’s
assets is Mayor Edward Hagedorn of Puerto Princesa City, who has
made his city environment-friendly and the cleanest.
Hosting recently a gathering of potential
domestic and foreign investors, the mayor showed how he was able to
harness local talents and native culture to promote his city’s
assets. It seems that he purposely did not encourage having taxicabs
in order to preserve its clean air, and prevent pollution in the
future. The city is now manufacturing electric-power driven vehicles
for its residents.
With the innovative manner that it is being
developed, I believe that Palawan would soon be a high-value tourism
destination. The province’s leaders are focusing on their tourism
assets, such as its subterranean river which is heavily attracting
both foreign and domestic tourists.
The small islands that surround Palawan are
already starting to teem with tourists again after the Dos Palmas
kidnapping which Gracia Burnham has chronicled in a book. The
province’s leaders are getting both the private and public sectors
to help push Palawan’s growth momentum.
opinion@manilatimes.net
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