CLOSURE. President Rodrigo Duterte orders Boracay closed for 6 months starting April 26, 2018. Malacañang file photo

MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the closure of Boracay, a world-famous tourist destination, for 6 months, starting on April 26.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque told this to reporters on Wednesday, April 4, as a Cabinet meeting was ongoing.

Duterte made his decision during the meeting.

The recommendation to close Boracay from tourists for 6 months – or until October – came from the Department of the Interior and Local Government. The Department of Tourism and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources had also called for a "total" closure, according to Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra.

It was the suggestion of these 3 departments that finally got Duterte's nod.

"DENR/DOT/DILG proposal approved after an exhaustive discussion," Guevarra told Rappler.

Duterte wants funds devoted to assisting residents in Boracay whose livelihood would be affected by the closure.

"Calamity funds will be activated to tide affected workers over," said Guevarra.

What does Boracay's "closure" actually mean on the ground?

Guevarra had previously said this could mean non-residents would be physically barred from entering the island.

Upon Boracay's closure, Duterte said during the meeting that there should be "validation" of which among the establishments in the island are complying with environmental rules and regulations.

It is not clear, however, how these establishments would be treated differently from those found violating environmental policies.

Other suggestions

But the Department of Trade and Industry had suggested implementing the closure in phases.

Financial advisers in the Cabinet had also been concerned about the timing of the closure. April 26 is in the middle of the summer season, the busiest time of the year for Boracay.

But from June to August, tourism arrivals wind down because of the rainy season. This low season would thus be covered by the 6-month closure period.

Duterte announced his intention to "close" Boracay last February 10, angered by environmental violations by commercial establishments that he thinks turned the popular tourist destination into a "cesspool."

Boracay stakeholders had said that closing the island for a year would take away the jobs of 36,000 people and would mean foregone revenues of P56 billion.

The National Economic and Development Authority, however, said a 6-month closure of the tourist area would have minimal impact on the economy. – Rappler.com</s>PRESIDENT Rodrigo R. Duterte has approved the recommendation of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), and Department of Tourism (DoT) to close Boracay for six months starting April 26.

The President announced his decision during the Cabinet meeting at Malacañang on Wednesday evening, April 4.

“Boracay closed for six months effective 26 April,” Presidential Spokesperson Herminio Harry L. Roque, Jr. said in a social media post.

In a text message to reporters, Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra said the President approved the proposal of the three agencies “after an exhaustive discussion.”

“Calamity funds will be activated to tide affected workers over,” the Palace official added.

The closure of the island from entry of local and foreign tourists is to give way to its rehabilitation.

Mr. Duterte himself has labeled the country’s world-famous Boracay island as a “cesspool.”</s>Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday approved the closure of the country's most famous tourist island, Boracay, for six months from April 26, his spokesman said, paving the way for a major cleanup of what he had described as a "sewer pool".

MANILA: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday approved the closure of the country's most famous tourist island, Boracay, for six months from April 26, his spokesman said, paving the way for a major cleanup of what he had described as a "sewer pool".

Boracay, on the northern tip of central Panay island, is a top destination for local and foreign tourists and its sugary white sand, lively night scene and abundant water sports attracted nearly 2 million visitors last year.

The island earns revenue from luxury hotels such as Shangri-La's five-star Boracay Resort & Spa and beachside restaurants and also employs thousands of local residents.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque announced Duterte's decision via Twitter without giving further details.

Duterte, whose leadership style has been criticized as dictatorial, has castigated the local government and residents for "overzealous" development and permitting beachfront building with inadequate sewage and water treatment facilities.

Many businesses on the island have been releasing wastewater directly into the sea, violating rules on wastewater management, according to Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu.

Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra, described the discussion about Boracay's temporary closure during a cabinet meeting late on Wednesday as "exhaustive" and said affected companies would receive financial assistance.

The closure, which is shorter than the one-year shutdown recommended by the environment ministry, comes just a few weeks after the government gave Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd permission to build a US$500 million casino and resort in Boracay.

Philippine Airlines said it will scale down its services to Caticlan and Kalibo airports, the gateways to Boracay, for six months from April following the government's decision.

It will expand flights to other tourist and provincial destinations in the Philippines, it said in a statement.</s>President Duterte has closed the island to tourists

Boracay Island in the Philippines is one of Asia’s most popular tourist destinations.

However, President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has issued a six-month tourist ban for the island.

The island will be off-limited to holidaymakers for the duration of this time while a thorough clean-up of the island is initiated.

The island will close on the 26 April, during the height of the peak summer season.

Although the estimated loss to the government in tourism will reach £790 million (20 billion pesos), the clean up is deemed by the President as necessary.</s>Manila, April 5 (IANS) Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered a six-month closure of Boracay island, one of the country’s main tourist destinations, and described it as a “cesspool” of water pollution, an official confirmed on Thursday.

Boracay is a 1,032-hectare island located about 300 km south of Manila which, in 2017 alone, received over two million visitors.

The island will be closed to the public from April 26, Harry Rogue, Duterte’s spokesman, told Efe news.

After a meeting with his cabinet, the President endorsed the measure Wednesday night on the recommendation of the Departments of Natural Resources, Tourism and Interior to solve the environmental problems on the island, the spokesman said, without offering more details.

Duterte threatened to shut down the famous island in February as he called it as a “cesspool” and said that the water there smells like “s**t”.

Since then several proposals have been made to rehabilitate the island, including a two-month closure at the beginning of the monsoon season in July and August or a gradual closure in different phases to modernise the island’s sewerage system and prevent hotels, resorts and other establishments from disposing of waste into the sea.

The three departments unanimously recommended the President to completely close Boracay for six months from the beginning of April, which will have a major impact on businesses and workers on the island.

Around 36,000 people will be affected by this order, while the island is expected to lose over 56,000 million pesos or over a billion US dollars.

Earlier in March, Duterte also said that he would place the island under the “state of calamity” if he ordered its closure, so that those affected by the measure would receive financial assistance.

The closure came after the government endorsed in February a project worth $500 million proposed by a Macao company to construct a casino and resort in Boracay.</s>(CNN) The Philippines has announced a six-month closure of the popular tourist destination of Boracay over concerns the island's famous beaches and clear blue waters have been transformed into a "cesspool" due to sustained environmental damage.

The closure, which will begin April 26, was announced following a cabinet meeting Wednesday, and would be a "total closure" to tourists, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said. No other information was made available, CNN Philippines reported

The decision ends weeks of speculation on the fate of the popular tourist destination, after Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte complained about the state of the island in February.

Boracay, which is around 170 miles south of the capital Manila, is home to as many as 17,000 people, many of whom are directly engaged in the tourism industry, according to CNN Philippines.

"Calamity funds" would be activated to provide financial relief to those affected by the shutdown, Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra said, but declined to give a figure.

The archipelago nation of the Philippines boasts well over 7,000 islands, and among them Boracay had come to be almost a byword for white-sand beach paradise.

But with an influx of tourists that began in the 1980s the island has struggled to maintain its idyllic allure. Last year almost 1.7 million tourists, including a significant number of cruise line passengers, visited the island during a 10-month period, according to the governmental Philippines Information Agency,

Among the problems caused by the island's long-running tourism boom is unregulated development and pipes carrying raw effluence directly into the sea.

In a survey of the island's sewerage facilities, the vast majority -- 716 of 834 -- residential and business properties were found to have no discharge permit and were presumed to be draining waste water directly into the sea, according to a report by the official Philippines News Agency.

In February Duterte directly called out the alleged mismanagement of the island, accusing those responsible of turning it into a "cesspool."

"As long as there is shit coming out of those pipes draining to the sea, I will never give you the time of the day (to return)" to the island, said Duterte.

Residents said that past pleas for help with infrastructure on the island had gone unheeded, and the government's reaction was too harsh.

"We cried for help for all the unfinished infrastructure that causes all these problems," Normeth Preglo Parzhuber, a kiteboarding school owner on Bulabog Beach told CNN via Facebook.

"Now we have to suffer for their mistakes."

Others said they were waiting for more details about the planned closure, with a briefing expected by Secretary Roque.

"We have yet to hear the official announcement and details of closure -- what will be our role as stakeholders? They said hotels and restaurants will not be closed but they will stop the tourists," said Nenette Aguirre Graf.

The shutdown is intended to provide an extended period to clean up the island and surrounding seas -- with the burden for connecting to the sewerage system likely to fall on business owners, Tourism Undersecretary Ricky Alegre told CNN.

"We describe (Boracay) as a world class island destination with poor services," Alegre says.

"And we wish to upgrade the services. We must swallow the bitter pill, and see this solution as one step backward and two steps forward. We want to continue to promote the Philippines as a beautiful destination -- and want to add that our destinations are environmentally compliant."

However, the local sentiment had been "clean (but) not close," according to one resident, Civi Civitarese.

An unnamed member of the anti-closure Boracay United group said that the island's residents could work to we can rehabilitate, restore and rebuild what was lost and preserve our national treasure" without the need for an extended and costly closure, through "sustainable environmental solutions."

Closing the island to tourism would "severely devastate the lives of over 19,000 workers that will lose everything, while crippling not only Boracay's micro, small and medium enterprises, but the entire country's tourism and reputation across the globe for a very long time," the member, quoted in Boracay United's press release, said.

The island, which regularly features on lists of the world's best beaches also plays host to thousands of cruise ship tourists and crew.

Prior to the announcement to shutter the resort island, the Department of Tourism said that as many as 18 ocean liners, carrying more than 50,000 passengers and around half that number of crew members, were due to visit the island in 2018.</s>Boracay Island, one of Asia’s top beach destinations, will be shut for six months after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte approved a proposal from the environment and tourism agencies to close the area for rehabilitation.

The island, known for its white-sand beaches, will be closed starting April 26, at the height of the peak summer season. The government estimates losses of up to 20 billion pesos ($384 million) in tourist receipts during the six-month shutdown. Speeding up rehabilitation may accelerate its soft opening to as early as July, Tourism Assistant Secretary Ricky Alegre says in a televised press briefing.

Philippine Airlines and Cebu Air’s Cebu Pacific will cancel flights to Boracay during the closure, the airlines said in separate statements. Boracay Island’s White Beach was ranked Asia’s second-best beach destination by TripAdvisor.

The closure of the island, which Duterte earlier described as a ‘cesspool,’ could also deal a blow to the nation’s target to attract 7.4 million tourists this year. About 15 % of the 6.6 million tourists in the Philippines visited Boracay last year, spending 56 billion pesos in the tourist spot.

Four other tourist destinations will be investigated next: Puerto Galera in Mindoro, El Nido and Coron in Palawan, Bohol and Siargao, Alegre said.

The government will release 2 billion pesos in emergency funds to help 36,000 workers who may be affected by the closure, Harry Roque, spokesman of President Rodrigo Duterte, said in the same briefing.

San Miguel Corp., the nation’s largest company by sales and the operator of an airport near the resort island, said it supports government’s initiative.

“The island needs to be rehabilitated and we have to support the government,” the company’s president Ramon Ang said in a statement. “Yes, we will endure some short-term pain but it’s a step in the right direction and in end we are hopeful it would bring about long-term gain for all.”</s>Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the shutdown to start on April 26 for a maximum period of half a year, his spokesman Harry Roque said. "Boracay is known as a paradise in our nation and this temporary closure is [meant] to ensure that the next generations will also experience that," Roque told reporters.

Officials said they were willing to take a hard line by using police and potentially even soldiers to enforce the closure. "We will issue guidelines on how to bar tourists from entering starting from the port," interior assistant secretary Epimaco Densing told reporters on Thursday. "Whether foreign or local, they will not be allowed to enter the island."

The decision jeopardizes the livelihood of thousands employed as part of a bustling tourist trade on the island that each year serves two million guests and pumps roughly $1 billion in revenue into the Philippine economy. Experts said the measure also appeared to contradict the government's own pro-development policy for the island, including the recent approval of a planned $500-million casino and resort on Boracay.

The threat of closure first emerged in February when Duterte blasted the tiny island's 500 tourism-related hotels, restaurants and other businesses, accusing them of dumping sewage directly into the sea and turning it into a "cesspool".

Authorities said Thursday that some businesses were using the island's drainage system to send untreated sewage into its surrounding turquoise waters. The environment ministry says 195 businesses, along with more than 4,000 residential customers, are not connected to sewer lines.

But within weeks of Duterte lashing out at the local businesses, the Philippines gave the green light for Macau casino giant Galaxy Entertainment to begin construction of a casino and resort complex in Boracay next year.

"The casino contradicts all the efforts now of cleaning up and making sure Boracay goes back to the state where it doesn't violate its carrying capacity," former Philippine environment undersecretary Antonio La Vina told AFP. He added that the area has seen "unlimited" development because "local government units and the national government agencies did not do their job of enforcing rules on land use, environmental impact assessment". Authorities said they would use the closure to build new sewage and drainage systems, demolish structures built on wetlands and sue officials and businessmen who violated environmental laws.

The impact of the decision was already being felt, with domestic airlines announcing they would scale back the number of flights to the 1,000-hectare (2,470-acre) island. "I am really in a quandary on how to handle six months [of closure]," budget hostel manager Manuel Raagas told AFP. "There will be no income and we have bills to pay so I don't know how I will survive."

The Boracay Foundation Inc., a business association on the island, had asked the government to shut down only those violating environmental laws. "It's unfair for compliant establishments to be affected by the closure," Executive Director Pia Miraflores told AFP.

During the period of closure, emergency funds would be released to assist businesses and employees that will be affected by the temporary closure, said Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra. The departments of social welfare and labor will provide additional aid for workers who could be laid off due to the closure, Guevarra added.</s>Manila, April 5, 2018 (AFP): The Philippines is closing its best-known holiday island Boracay to tourists for up to six months over concerns that the once idyllic white-sand resort has become a “cesspool” tainted by dumped sewage, authorities said on Thursday.

 Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the shutdown to start on April 26 for a maximum period of half a year, his spokesman Harry Roque said.

 “Boracay is known as a paradise in our nation and this temporary closure is (meant) to ensure that the next generations will also experience that,” Roque told reporters.

 The decision jeopardises the livelihood of thousands employed in the island’s bustling tourist trade that each year serves two million guests and pumps roughly $1 billion in revenue into the Philippine economy.

 Experts said the measure also appeared to contradict the government’s own pro-development policy for the island, including the recent approval of a planned $500-million casino and resort on Boracay.

 The threat of closure first emerged in February when Duterte blasted the tiny island’s hundreds of tourism-related hotels, restaurants and other businesses, accusing them of dumping sewage directly into the sea and turning it into a “cesspool”.

 Authorities said Thursday some businesses were using the island’s drainage system to send untreated sewage into its surrounding turquoise waters.

 The environment ministry says 195 businesses, along with more than 4,000 residential customers, are not connected to sewer lines.

 But within weeks of Duterte lashing out at the local businesses, the Philippines gave the green light for Macau casino giant Galaxy Entertainment to begin construction next year of the casino and resort complex.

‘How will I survive?’ 

 “The casino contradicts all the efforts now of cleaning up and making sure Boracay goes back to the state where it doesn’t violate its carrying capacity,” former Philippine environment undersecretary Antonio La Vina told AFP.

 He added that the area has seen “unlimited” development because “local government units and the national government agencies did not do their job of enforcing rules on land use, environmental impact assessment”.

 Authorities said they would use the closure to build new sewage and drainage systems, demolish structures built on wetlands and sue officials and businessmen who violated environmental laws.

 The impact of the decision was already being felt, with domestic airlines announcing they would scale back the number of flights to the jumping off point to the 1,000-hectare (2,470-acre) island.

 Malaysian low-cost carrier Asia Air has suspended all of its domestic and international flights to Boracay until further notice.

 “I am really in a quandary on how to handle six months (of closure),” budget hostel manager Manuel Raagas told AFP.

 “There will be no income and we have bills to pay so I don’t know how I will survive.”

 Officials said they were willing to take a hard line, saying police and potentially even soldiers would enforce the closure.

 “We will issue guidelines on how to bar tourists from entering starting from the port,” interior assistant secretary Epimaco Densing told reporters on Thursday.

 “Whether foreign or local, they will not be allowed to enter the island.”

 The Boracay Foundation Inc., a business association on the island, had asked the government to shut down only those violating environmental laws.

 “It’s unfair for compliant establishments to be affected by the closure,” Executive Director Pia Miraflores told AFP.

 Miraflores said that even before the ban was announced, its shadow had hit some businesses hard in Boracay.

 Some couples who scheduled their weddings on the island up to a year or two in advance had cancelled their reservations even before the ban was announced, she said, with tour agents also besieged with client calls on whether to pursue their planned trips.

 Boracay employs 17,000 people, as well as 11,000 construction workers working on new projects.</s>ONE of the Philippines’ most famous tourist hot spots will be off limits from April 26 after President Rodrigo Duterte approves a six-month closure of Boracay island, paving the way for a major clean-up of what he has described as a “cesspool.”

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque announced the closure late on Wednesday in a post on Twitter.

“Bora closed for six mos effective 26 April,” Roque said.

Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra told the Inquirer disaster funds would be activated to help workers affected by the closure. This didn’t stop people from expressing their disappointment and concern for local businesses affected by the move.

SEE ALSO: Boracay: A clear casualty of development

The island, four miles long and less than a mile wide, is about 320 km south of the capital, Manila and has become a favourite with backpackers for its long white beach and lively nightlife.

Duterte made the decree for closure after visiting the island in February. He is said to have been outraged by “environmental violations” that have left the island a “cesspool.”

“You go into the water, it’s smelly. Smell of what? S***. Because it all comes out in Boracay,” he said.

While the move will likely a long-term positive impact on tourism in Boracay and the Philippines, the short-term impacts could be significant, especially on the country’s three main airlines.

According to CAPA Centre for Aviation, Boracay accounts for approximately six percent of seat capacity at the Cebu Pacific Group and the Philippine Airlines Group while smaller Philippines AirAsia has over 20 percent of its capacity allocated to the Boracay market.

SEE ALSO: Microplastic pollution in world’s oceans poses major threat to filter-feeding megafauna



“Philippines tourism authorities will need to invest heavily in marketing alternative tourist destinations, and work closely with the impacted airlines, to avoid a decline in overall visitor numbers,” the group said in a statement.

Boracay attracts approximately 2 million annual visitors, close to half of which are foreigners. Total visitor numbers to the Philippines reached 6.6 million in 2017, following three years of double-digit growth, but with the closure of Boracay, the Philippines may struggle to meet its 7.4 million visitor target for 2018.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announces the six-month closure of the island of Boracay in the Philippines, starting April 26.