By Johnny Dayang
Amid the uproar created by the possible closure of Boracay island to tourists, one of the brightest recommendations to surface is the offer of tycoon Lucio Tan, owner of Boracay Tubi, one of two water suppliers in the island, to build a second drainage system.
(Tubi, in Ilonggo, means water, the equivalent of ‘tubig’ in Cebuano and Tagalog.)
Under the proposal, the drainage system will be connected to a wastewater facility that treats rainwater, household liquids and other fluids before these are discharged to the sea.
In short, all liquid disposals acceptable for treatment in the facility are rinsed of impurities before they are dumped in the sea, a process that ensures that the water that meets the saltwater does not create ecological distortions that result in environmental imbalance.
Tan’s plan, which has already reached the attention of the government, is non-disruptive because work on the drainage and sewage treatment facilities will be done during lean months.
But more importantly, Tan’s creative suggestion carries several other positive ramifications.
First, activity in the famed Boracay island will not be affected the whole year round even as the government executes the closure and demolition orders against erring establishments.
Second, public funds intended to treat liquid disposals from businesses and households will be at the expense of the tycoon but with a contract that the cost of rehabilitation will not be unfairly passed to consumers.
Third, adopting the Tan solution means proceeding with the State’s planned rehabilitation, on one hand, while seeing the construction of a sewage treatment plant simultaneously.
And, fourth, it is right to adopt the Tan proposal because the offering investor is duty bound to improve on its services and corporate social responsibility to the host community.
By extension, Boracay Island Water Company, Inc., Tan’s water supply competitor, will be compelled to do the best it can outside the existing services it is extending to the public.
But the highlight in accepting the tycoon’s proposal is seeing to it that there will only be very few displacements to be felt when some of the violating establishments are padlocked.
Joblessness and loss of livelihood are painful facts of life, something the government must seriously consider when it comes to embracing proposals.
Even more weighty is the fact that the government, by adopting the Tan proposal, will retain its monthly billion-peso revenue which the island contributes.
A sound investment offer is more advisable than any spur-of-the-moment decision. And Boracay’s case is something that needs an even more balanced solution.
