By Bohol Governor Arthur Yap
THE BOHOL STORY, HOW SHOULD IT BE. In an interview with Raul Gatal, Gov. Art Yap shared that Bohol has a story to tell. Hopefully, a slot in Discovery Channel for the Bohol Story.
Covid-19 has made it possible for us to take step back- -just sit down, and think, and plan on what we really want to see in Bohol. If you ask me as governor what is my appreciation of a tourism success story, is it numbers? Well, that is only one of the facets that I’m looking at. It’s not just about the number. It’s the quality of visitors, it’s the quality of the visit. It is whether we are despoiling our patrimony or not, because if we despoil our patrimony, we have nothing to leave to the future generations. So, the story of Bohol must be a story of a tourism that is sustainable and that everybody is on the same page. We shun the tourism of quick box. That cannot be. And, even just for that to get everybody a chance to sit down, to rethink and to replan tourism, I think Covid has already done an intended service even as we dement the tragedy of Covid. Even as we dement the tragedy of Covid, the fact that Covid has given as a time to sit down is already an intended consequential benefit of this tragedy. We’re always forced to look at the half glass full, never the half glass empty. We are challenged to look at the silver linings at any tragedy. And, if we are forced to look at silver lining, I would like to think that this is one of those silver linings that Covid has given us the chance to step at the brake, to set back, to make a cow.
HEALTH ABOVE ALL
While the lockdown is protecting the health of the people, the lockdown’s effect also means that the economy has taken a big hit.
We’re also working on featuring the people who have also been hit. When you say that the Philippine economy has suffered a P2.2-Trillion hit, the question for me as governor of Bohol is how much of that is Bohol’s hit. How much have we been hit? In my computation, that’s about P33 Billion for the year. And, when you say P33-Billion hit for our economy, who has actually been hit? Is it the farmers? Is it the fisherfolk? Is it the tourism, the transport operators? Is it the tour guides? Is it the housekeeping people? Is it the people in the wellness industry? We must find out who has been hit more than the others; and find out how the hit has been for them and try to see how we can focus on helping these people at least through the next one-one and half to two years, because we don’t see any State stabilizing on this situation until maybe one, one and a half years from now, not even with talks of a vaccine right now, because the vaccine is still has to be commercialized. So, that I think is the great challenge right now- -to show the face of the sectors that have been hit and trying to get everybody to understand that; because in Bohol today, it depends where you are sitting. Some people think that the provincial government has done enough for them. Others think that the provincial government has not done enough for them. Others have actually even thought that the provincial government has done nothing for them. It depends where you are sitting.
BALANCE
And, I think the great challenge for Bohol society right now is to balance and calm each one down, to make them understand the nature of the disease, the nature of this virus, and the challenge that we will have to face moving forward. I think the most critical thing to make people understand right now, everybody to understand, is that without protecting the health of the Bol-anons, there is no way to move forward economically. That is the number one thing that everybody has to understand.
We must have a working modus with all the sectors that health primarily has to be protected. After that, we must look at the sectors that are more vulnerable than the others and try to tighten over; and who has been most affected will determine what sectors of the economy we are going to open and how we are going to open it. And, I see that the people in the wellness industry and the tourism people are the ones that have been hit the most. If you look at these people- -the masseuse, the people in wellness industry, the tour guides, the tour operators, the transport industry, the carenderias, the hotel operators, the resorts, restaurants- -these people have been badly hit by the fact that tourism has evaporated. It used to be that we had about 1.5 million tourists we accepted in 2019.
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