SAN JUAN, Abra – The Tourism Isulong Mo Party-list group is pushing for an integrated and comprehensive approach in making tourism as one of the country’s major economic driver and an important factor in charting rural development.
Torismo Isulong Mo Party-list 2nd nominee and former Mayor Marco Bautista stated that it is unfortunate that the government is banking on natural attractions as drivers of the tourism in different parts of the country but illegal activities such as quarrying, deforestation, conversion of forest reservations to commercial vegetable farms among others continue to damage the state of the environment which is supposed to serve as a natural pull for people to visit the different places.
Further, he pointed out that one of the deterrent to the robust growth of tourism is the lack of funds that is supposed to ensure the development of the support infrastructure that will be instrumental in spurring the promotion of the destinations for people to be enticed to visit different places.
Bautista argued that as an example, government is encouraging farm tourism but the concerned agencies implementing the same do not have the funds that will support the infrastructure development in the areas where farm tourism are located to make it convenient for tourists to move around.
On the other hand, the former mayor underscored that in the cases of national parks that are located in the different parts of the country, the same are not well preserved and protected as evidenced by the proliferation of numerous illegal activities that tend to ruin the state of the environment which is supposed to serve as the primary attraction for visitors, thus, the deterioration of the same tend to affect the tourism potentials of the said destinations.
According to him, the government should be aggressive in ensuring the protection and preservation of national parks so that whatever illegal activities that will exist will not be allowed to sustain the regeneration of the environment to be able to suit the interest of tourists visiting the same to be able to generate jobs for the people and establish sustainable economic activities and sources of livelihood as tourism has a domino effect in terms of providing available economic activities of people.
Bautista emphasized that the Torismo Isulong Mo Party-list group wants to put in place an integrated and comprehensive approach in helping make tourism as one of the country’s major economic drivers by maximizing the government’s limited resources for the implementation of high impact projects that will translate to countryside development so that people will be encouraged to move around and contribute in improving the current state of development in potential tourist destinations around the archipelago.
Bautista explained that the development of potential tourist destinations in the remote communities will definitely serve as a driver for growth and development in the said areas because there will be available jobs that will be created which will also trigger the creation of economic activities that will serve as a permanent sources of livelihood of the people in the said areas.
The Torismo Isulong Mo Party-list group vowed to help in advancing the state of the country’s tourism industry once it will be able to get the required presentation in Congress after the May 9, 2022 synchronized national and local elections. By HENT