Tourism law: Will it bring back Kang-Irag?

We where in the middle of Romblon on board the SuperFerry 5, just off where the Princess of the Stars met its untimely fate, when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) was in Cebu signing the National Tourism Policy Act of 2009 or Republic Act 9593 or the “Tourism Act” which she signed at the newly-opened Imperial Palace Water Park Resort in Lapu-Lapu City during the One Visayas Summit on Climate Change.

For me, the Tourism Act is in effect nothing but a big reorganization of the agencies under the Department of Tourism (DOT) like the Philippine Convention Visitors Corp. (PCVC) that will now be renamed as the Tourism Promotions Board (TPB), while the Duty-Free Philippines will be reorganized as the Duty-Free Philippines Corp. (DFPC). Then the Philippine Tourism Authority (PTA) will be renamed as the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA).

I submit that as of this writing, I still haven’t yet gotten a copy of this newly-signed Tourism Law, so depending on which side of the political landscape you belong, you can either hail it as a triumph in Philippine legislation or dub it as what we used to say about reorganizations… simply putting a new collar on the same old dog! As for me, I’d give this law the benefit of the doubt . . . until I see something obviously objectionable in this law.

While I have a very high respect for the DOT under my good friend Sec. Ace Durano, however I cannot say much for the PTA, which until now remains to be one of the worse agencies under the DOT. The problem is “turf” where Sec. Durano wouldn’t dare step on the foot of the PTA General Manager, who seems to be autonomous. Just ask yourself, since when did the PTA come up with great ideas or even fixed the old ones in their possession?

My faithful readers know that since the mid-’90s we’ve been taking the PTA to task, at the time when the President was President Fidel V. Ramos, about the infamous Kang-Irag Golf Course up in the hills of Cebu City. This was a Black Knight (the company owned by famous South African pro Gary Player) Designed 18-hole golf course, which was all but 86 percent complete, except for cemented cart paths and a club house. But the entire course was playable and in fact, the last time I played up there was together with our good friend, Sen. Serge Osmeña.

Things started to sour when the PTA feigned that it lost some P20 million a year, which was their excuse to bid it out to interested bidders. But then we asked: how could the PTA lose money when the huge tourism development surrounding the Kang-Irag Golf Course was littered with hundreds of fruit bearing mango trees? Those mango trees are still bearing fruit today and only God knows who is making money from this government own land.

We wrote numerous articles about the loss of income on the mango trees alone, but the Office of the Ombudsman didn’t even care to comment on the articles we wrote. Either they too had their “cut” from the mango harvest… or they just didn’t care to see that whoever was harvesting those mangoes was making a small fortune! So when the bids were out, the winning bidder was Mr. Jose Go of Gotesco Corp.

When Gotesco Properties got possession of the Kang-Irag property, instead of fixing the place at very little cost (like putting up a clubhouse and cart paths), they decided to hire the services of Nick Price, another famous South African pro who probably wanted his own design and presented a totally new golf course totaling 36 holes.

Hence Gotesco’s first order of business was to erase the old golf course from the face of the earth to construct the new one. My friends who were regular players in the old course pleaded with Mr. Gotesco to retain at least 9 holes and destroy it when they finished their first 9-hole course. Their pleas went unheeded and the bulldozers did a very efficient job in removing what was once Cebu’s most difficult mountain golf course.

Like I said, this happened sometime in the mid-90s and after months of unfulfilled promises from Gotesco that they would open up the new course, they ended up filing a case in a Manila Court to stop the PTA from getting back the destroyed golf course. Today, there is no golf course in Kang-Irag, when it should have one that would have been a big money-maker especially with today’s tourism development in Cebu.

What makes this ill-fated PTA deal so frustrating is that the Philippine government lost money in this bungled deal and those who made money are literally laughing all the way to the bank! These people should be put behind bars, but this is the Philippines where crooks get away with their crime!

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow entitled, “Straight from the Sky” shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8:00 in the evening.