Palace, Noli shrug off negative travel advisories

Malacañang shrugged off yesterday the negative travel advisories issued by the United States, Canada and Australia even as officials vowed the government would increase efforts to improve peace and order in the country.

Vice President Noli de Castro and Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye stressed negative travel advisories are actually routine reactions by embassies on violent incidents in the country as part of their responsibilities to their nationals.

"I think we should get used to these travel advisories because even in the US, we could issue travel advisories because in some universities there are shootings, right?" De Castro said, referring the recent shooting in Virginia Tech that left 33 people dead.

"So what the national and local governments will just do is to do everything so that we will have peace and prevent crimes in the communities," he said.

De Castro was in the Palace as a guest of the weekly government radio program "The Cabinet Speaks" taped at the press briefing room.

He said it is expected for diplomats to issue travel warnings as part of their duties to advise their nationals on the current peace and order situation in the country.

"It would be better for them (embassies) to issue travel advisories so that they would have less responsibilities, after all, many of their nationals don’t heed them anyway," De Castro said.

He said he himself noticed that there are more foreigners visiting the country now, indicating that the travel advisories may not be that effective.

Bunye cited a statement of former US Ambassador to the Philippines Francis Ricciardone that he himself does not believe in his Embassy’s own travel advisories against the Philippines. – Paolo Romero