Durano bloated tourism figures, staff

MACTAN, Cebu – Mactan is my favorite local tourist destination. It has an international airport with a lot of flights in and out. It also has a number of world class resorts. With the early onset of summer, it was time to take an advanced holiday in Mactan’s Plantation Bay.

I am also happy to contribute to the bloated visitor numbers of Tourism Secretary Ace Durano. That’s plus two for me and my wife to Mr. Durano’s tourism statistics. I am sure I was not the only one surprised when Durano claimed his able leadership generated a total of 8.9 million tourists.

The truth is… foreign visitor arrival is just 2.5 million, even less than usual. But out of desperation to show a better than real report card, Durano included 6.4 million domestic tourists like me in his count. It is bad enough they include in their foreign visitor count the balikbayans who are really Pinoys or dual citizens and shouldn’t be part of an honest count. Many Koreans are also already local residents.

I suspect Durano included in his domestic tourist numbers our kababayans who travel thru the Ro-Ro on Ate Glue’s so called nautical highway to come up with 6.4 million domestic tourists. But they are likely just ordinary Pinoys going home or trading goods who just happened to be domestic travelers. Among us journalists, we have a term for conjured reports but it isn’t polite and it isn’t decent… something along the lines of self gratification which is exactly what Durano is doing when publicizing imagined achievements.

We are still eons away from the 12 million real foreign tourists who visit Thailand. Malaysia probably can boast of 8 million but that may include the Singaporeans who go to Johore on weekends on day trips to shop and load gas. Mr. Durano really has some nerve claiming a figure he knows is not a true measure of his tenure at the Tourism department.

But I have to give credit to Durano’s belated report to Ate Glue about the deleterious effect of DOTC’s failure to regain our Category 1 rating with the US Federal Aviation Authority. He should have spoken up two years ago. It will be recalled that Ate Glue assigned to DOTC Secretary Leandro Mendoza the task of delivering this rating after we lost it, well… more than two years ago.

Our being in a lower rating prevents Philippine Airlines from flying their new and fuel efficient planes to US cities as well as from adding new destinations there. It was also used, according to Durano, as an excuse of Korea and Japan in denying our applications for additional flights that would bring in the tourists Durano needs to deliver a fat but honest count.

But nothing’s going to happen any time soon if we take the track record of this administration to account. The problem with our FAA safety rating will be like the half utilized NAIA 3 — a sad monument of official incompetence in achieving results that are good for the people rather than for just some people.

Bloating figures is apparently a core competence of Mr. Durano. I have just been told that he is now also busy bloating the already humongous bureaucracy at the tourism department. He was said to have reorganized the department beyond the limits of the new tourism law and appointed some 300 favorites to permanent positions. That would tie the hands of the new administration, assuming we will be lucky enough to have a new administration after the May election.

Some elements in the tourism industry’s private sector have expressed apprehension at the way Durano is rushing the implementation of the IRR of R.A. 9593 otherwise known as the Tourism Act of 2009. In the new organizational structure for DOT proper and the three attached agencies the TPB, TIEZA and Duty Free, Durano was claimed to have doubled the number of positions.

The most serious apprehension expressed to me is the secrecy by which the private sector nominees to the TPB and the TIEZA and the Duty Free are being selected. The law envisions a close coordination between the tourism department and the legitimate industry stakeholders but this is supposedly not happening at all. The list of midnight appointments is supposedly already sent to Malacañang for signature of Ate Glue.

If Mr. Durano has any sense of decency and goodwill, he would refrain from these acts of midnight madness. In just a few more weeks, the people could be voting in a new team and this new team should be able to act and carry out their programs without the excess baggage of the past.

But that’s not the way people in this current administration think. They see the last few weeks as the last two minutes to make hay… only goes to show what kind of people they really are. –Boo Chanco (The Philippine Star)