Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu said Wednesday the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force is on track to meet all its targets by the time its term ends in May 2021.
“The BIATF is capping 2020 on a high note, setting us off in 2021 with solid confidence that we will hit our targets within the remaining five months ahead of us,” Cimatu said.
He is the chairman of the BIATF, which President Rodrigo Duterte created more than two years ago to supervise and manage Boracay Island’s rehabilitation in Aklan.
In its year-end report, the BIATF’s implementing arm, the Boracay Inter-Agency Rehabilitation Management Group, revealed that the number of structures violating the easement rules in Boracay was now down to only 342, representing 21 percent of all 1,569 illegal structures on the island.
Of the 1,569 structures, 1,230 were inside the 12-meter road easement while 339 establishments were inside the 25+5-meter beach easement limit.
Majority or 943 of these structures are commercial establishments with 212 violating the 25+5-meter easement rule and 731 within the 12-meter easement. This was followed by residential houses at 456 (117 and 339 in 25+5-meter and 12-meter easements, respectively).
BIARMG general manager Natividad Bernardino said Boracay’s rehabilitation was successful in terms of compliance by hotels and other commercial establishments. Rio N. Araja
“The improved water quality of Boracay has been primarily the result of the enforcement of the 25+5-meter shoreline easement rule,” she said.
“The indigenous peoples and natives of Boracay were awarded land through the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program as a strategy to relocate them from the ‘No Build Zones’ in the wetlands and forestlands.”
This year, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has filed 51 cases for illegal occupation of Boracay forestlands out of the 406 notices of violations issued for such offense.