Woe, not 'Wow Philippines'

An island-wide blackout hit Boracay last Sunday. Fortunately, I was going back to Manila that day after spending a weekend vacation there. The blackout started at eight in the morning and power did not return until way past noon when I finally boarded my Cebu Pacific flight to Manila.

As it turns out, such long hours of blackouts have been regular occurrences at the island as I gathered from Boracay folks. In fact, I was told, the blackouts lately have at least become far and few and in shorter duration. The island’s power situation has been getting better, they say, than last December until January when they suffered daylong blackouts.

Not even President Arroyo was spared from this sorry state of electricity supply while she was also in Boracay over the weekend. Mrs. Arroyo was spending “President’s Time” (a euphemism for rest and recreation) with the members of the First Family at the posh Shangri-La’s Boracay Resort and Spa.

But of course, the Chief Executive perhaps hardly noticed this. The spanky five-star hotel that sits on top of the Boracay hills is equipped with a generator system that automatically kicks in if there’s blackout. However, a blackout occurred, I was told, while the President was hosting a state dinner at the same hotel last Sunday night for visiting Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Michael Somare.

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, who was the Cabinet secretary-in-attendance for the visiting head of state, wisecracked: “It’s Earth Hour, part two!” He was, of course, playfully referring to last Saturday night’s “lights out” event called “Earth Hour.” It was a worldwide activity to promote consciousness on protecting the environment from the impact of global warming and climate change. The Philippines was among the top participants in this “symbolic darkness” when all lights and electricity-run appliances were switched off for one hour (from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.).

From the information posted on the website wwf.org.ph, over 15 million Filipinos in 650 major cities and towns joined the “Earth Hour.” According to this website, some 611 megawatts of power was saved during the 60-minute “voluntary blackout.” This was equivalent to shutting down a dozen coal-fired power plants for an hour.  

While indeed there might be nationwide participation in the Philippines during the “Earth Hour” that night, it was different though from what I personally witnessed in Boracay. From where we stayed at the beachfront, only one establishment joined the “voluntary blackout.” But that should not be surprising since Boracay folks have been enduring all this time blackouts forced upon them by the Aklan Electric Cooperative (Akelco) that supplies them power. 

So how do residents, especially resort owners and other business establishments, try to cope with their acute power supply problem? Of course, these establishments have to use generator systems. But these generators are powered by diesel. A 60-kilovolt generator needs at least 120 liters of diesel to run electricity for 24 hours.

And how much does diesel per liter cost in Boracay? I was told the diesel price on the island is around P30 to P31 per liter. Calculating this cost, a daylong blackout is enough to pay for one-month electricity bill for a household in Boracay. What riles more Boracay folks was Akelco’s serving them recently a notice of increase of electricity rate. They are currently charged around P4.30 per kilowatt-hour.

 The power outage in our country’s major tourist destination is just one of the many woes that Boracay folks have to bear with. And to think, Boracay is one of the prime tourist spots being promoted under the “Wow, Philippines” program of the Department of Tourism (DOT).

“Wow, Philippines” is the campaign slogan coined by erstwhile tourism secretary, now Senator Richard Gordon. To the credit of Gordon’s successors up to incumbent DOT Secretary Joseph Ace Durano, they kept this “Wow, Philippines” campaign slogan. It’s the counterpart of tourism campaign slogans by our neighbors competing for tourists to go to their countries like “Malaysia, Truly Asia” and “Amazing Thailand.”     

But how can we compete for tourists when such a basic service like power supply is not even reliable in Boracay. “Wow, Philippines” becomes “Woe, Philippines” if this sorry state of power supply in Boracay continues.

Other than this off-and-on power supply, tourist resort operators in Boracay are also badly affected by the global financial crisis. Travelers from Europe and the United States, which are the biggest sources of tourist arrivals in Boracay, have significantly gone down compared to year-ago level, as noted by resort operators like Ed Fuentes, owner of Sun Village where we stayed during our short vacation in Boracay.

What is also holding further developments in Boracay is the still unsettled issue of how to implement the Supreme Court (SC) ruling in October last year that declared the whole island part of public domain. The late former President Ferdinand Marcos had declared Boracay island a tourist zone and marine reserve, which prevented landowners from getting land titles to their properties.

In this SC ruling, it, however, clarified that this does not mean private landowners in Boracay cannot get titles to their properties. The SC ruled they could get land titles in two ways. One is wait for Congress to pass a law allowing it. The High Court noted that there is one such bill already pending at the House of Representatives. The other mode is “to apply for original registration of title such as homestead or sales patent, subject to the conditions imposed by the law.” 

To date though, the affected private landowners in Boracay have yet to get the details of how they could process their applications. Fuentes though told me things are not that all bad in Boracay despite the many problems they face in order to stay afloat in the midst of the global financial tsunami. He was especially thankful to the extra efforts being exerted by Durano-led DOT to bring in tourists from non-traditional sources like Russia. They were several batches of Russian tourists that came recently, Fuentes said, that kept the island paradise full of tourism business. So it’s “Wow, Philippines” for now.