A fee of fifty pesos from every diver in every dive site in
Boracay is planned in the following days or months based on the proposed amendment
on the Malay Municipal Ordinance #119 series of 1998 of the Town Council of
Malay.
This was highly opposed by the Boracay Association of Scuba
Diving Schools (BASS) through a Position Paper it sent to the Council on the 27th
of June.
There are 32 dive sites in the island. In its Position
Paper, the BASS consisting of 37 members gave its reasons for its opposition.
For BASS this is not fair and not justified.
In an interview on Friday, Cirilo Tirol, the President of
BASS said all diving schools in Boracay disagree to the proposal. Allegedly, the amount to be collected is not
supposed to be since divers do not earn that much in every dive site.
Tirol also wondered why it is still necessary to collect
fifty pesos from divers or tourists since BASS is also active in working with
the LGU in taking care of the natural resource of Boracay.
The activities cited by Tirol were the off-shore clean up,
discovering other dive sites, assisting in laying of buoys in the island,
participation in Rescue and Relief Operations and other activities of the LGU
from the time BASS was founded in 1996.
Also cited was the placement of the ship CAMIA and an
airplane in the sea bed of Boracay as an additional attraction or diving site.
Tirol added that the collection of environmental fee from
tourists should be sufficient if the proposed fifty peso charge is meant for
the environment.
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