Duterte slams Boracay as ‘cesspool,’ threatens to shut down island

To be fair,I can remember people saying the place being ruined long before 2005..They were saying the same thing in the early 90`s!
The only ones to blame are corrupt and useless Gov. workers/officials.. Nothing but bad will come from blaming investors that have to comply with their "requirement lists".

I`ll give you my opinion later..(thats all it will be)
Unfortunately I have to attend another enforced DENR meeting in approx 1 hour!!

Old news perhaps but according to CNN Philippines:

http://cnnphilippines.com/regional/2018/02/23/denr-investigation-panglao-island.html

On a slightly different note, I am in Paris right now. What a majestic city it is! With so much to see, the ultimate city of culture. And Disneyland too. However owing to its popularity it is oversubscribed giving rise to long queues, traffic jams and overcrowded places of interest. Did we enjoy it? Yes we did but it was spoiled a bit for the reasons given. It is also very expensive and this was underlined by the opinion voiced by some FOWs we met who claimed it was the most expensive city in Europe (not sure if that is true * ).

The air pollution did not go unnoticed. And we noted a couple taking a selfie photo with the street sign for the Place de Kyoto in the background, possibly a tongue in cheek snapshot for their album.

We all had a great time though and found a great Pan Asian restaurant near the hotel.

* maybe they were correct:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/city-breaks/most-expensive-and-cheapest-cities-2018/

I think we can safely say, Markham, that I know a hell of a lot more Filipinos than you do, who 'earn just as much and some even more', than that 50k.

I've just finished working alongside about 80 of them, men and women alike, for starters, all of whom I am on first name terms with. Not to mention rubbing shoulders on the jeepney every day for months, with hundreds, if not thousands more.

going to work every day, clocking on, doing the job, having lunch with your workmates in the canteen or in the Jollibee or Burger King if you feel like pushing the boat out, clocking off, and going back home on the jeepney or habal habal when you've finished, i.e. a normal daily routine of the type that countless millions of people go through every day, is an area of life in the Philippines, and it is a very important area too, that you haven't got the first clue about. You don't know anything about it at all. You've no experience of it.

50k is a high wage even by the standards of IT Park, the most affluent part of Cebu, with the highest number of relatively well-paid people walking around. Even there in IT Park, the average wage of even tenured established people, is probably about 20-25k. CEO's of whole interactive call centers with about 60 people under them, can earn less than 50k. 50k is a high wage, without a doubt. It's about 9 times more than what somebody in the Jollibee earns.

This is ludicrous and offensive to the many people who have found romance online and who have married the person they have fallen in love with.
There are hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who use, and have used, online dating to find a partner when their local search for a partner was not successful.
Perhaps there are some people who go online to "fish" for women but I would imagine the vast majority are looking for love, both male and female.
A "sex tourist" is not looking for love and romance.

You have been banned here many times and it is a shame that you cannot limit your observations here to matters that would be helpful to others instead of getting everyone's back up.

Wonderful photos as usual, Jim

You've certainly had fleeting acquaintances with many more Filipinos than I have, I will grant you that. But there again, I didn't go there with the aim of screwing as many as I could and as cheaply as possible. Not my style.

Thousands more? Yet another fanciful exaggeration: you excel at those.

Correct. Unlike you, I don't consider it morally acceptable to go to a third world country and compete for employment with the locals. But then you're a self-confessed user who is selfish beyond belief. Filipinos are naturally shy and reserved, especially when interacting with foreigners. Do you really imagine that they would object to your use of their first name?

Oh so CEOs confide their salaries to you?! You're having a laugh.

You now claim to earn nine times more than a Jolibee employee? Yesterday you conceded that you actually earned Php 350 per hour and not the £70 (Php 5,137) you led us to believe earlier. So you're not actually earning as much as you claimed which begs the question, why exactly do you insist on competing with Filipinos for a job that pays considerably less per year than you'd earn in six months from flogging ice cream? That may be entirely acceptable to you but then it's clear your moral compass is offset by 180 degrees to everyone else's.

Why exactly are you here? This is not a discussion site for those of your chosen lifestyle and your arrogant patronising of Filipinos and their British (and other western) partners is highly disrespectful and most unwelcome. It is high time you were banned again.

you actually earned Php 350 per hour and not the £70


350pp an hour is as near as dammit £7 an hour--so £70 was most likely a simple typing error.

we've been through this already. I, and each of the other 3 native speaker foreigners in my section of the company were issued with employment visas because it is considered that we are better able to do the job than Filipinos can. The company struggles to recruit Filipinos because their English is not good enough. They have to interview about 1000 Filipinos (75% of whom don't even make it through to to take the aptitude test), before they can find one, that passes the test, and who can start. With foreigner native speakers, they only have to interview about 30 applicants before they get a starter.

there are continual interviews all day long. They interview and assess about 100-150 people every day. Filipinos have got almost no chance of getting the job. Foreigners have a small chance, but it is a hell of a lot of a better chance than Filipinos have. It's a difficult job. That is why someone on the floor, at the very most basic junior level, earns more than CEO's of normal call centers can.

what? I work in the industry. I talk to colleagues all the time, see job advertisements everywhere and so on. Of course we know what people, including CEO's, can be paid. The CEO doesn't have to tell me what their salaries are themselves : although it is a trait of Filipino culture that people are very much more forthcoming about disclosing their salaries than British people are. A reluctance to do that, is not a Filipino trait - it's a British one.

you don't get my point at all here, either. 350 pesos an hour in Cebu is 9 times, what they pay in a Philippines Jollibee.

therefore, compared to what everyone is earning all around you, if somebody is earning 350 pesos an hour in Cebu, in relative terms, it is like somebody earning £70 an hour in Manchester.

If I, or anybody else who worked at that job, was walking in a mall in Colon, surrounded by crowds of Filipinos, they'd probably be the only 1 out of 100 people, or even more, that had a salaried job that paid 50k. Most of them are making less than about 15k. Hardly any are making more than 25k.

My wife just told me that there are more tourists in Malapascua now, as well as in her island.
This will have financial benefits of course and I am guessing that the people there probably want Boracay to stay closed for a lot longer

Just out of interest, why aren’t you in the Philippines now? Are you going to be returning to the job?

Nice try but no cigar!

With the Exchange Rate at 73.29, Php 350 is just £4.77, rather less than £7!

But his claim that Php 350 paid to a Filipino in Cebu is equivalent to £70 paid to a European call centre worker in Manchester is frankly ridiculous. For a start, he should be challenged to provide a copy of - or link to - an advertisement for such a position. Unless you have a death wish, don't hold your breath whilst waiting for his response since he never backs-up his assertions with published factual information and, of course, no such job is likely to exist. £70 is approximately what my daughter, a fully - yet newly - qualified Chartered Accountant charges her private clients for an hour of her time and hers is a considerably more skilled job that took her many years to train for.

yes--youre right--i had a brain fart moment. i would have thought 350pp an hour is good meney over there.

you don't get it, Markham. 350 pesos to a Filipino, IS equivalent to what £70 is to a UK person. To a Filipino, 350 pesos, or £7 an hour isn't the £7 an hour it is to you. A lot of Filipinos don't earn that, 350 pesos, in a day. To a Filipino, in terms of ordinary earning power, that 350 pesos is more like £70. It is 9 times, what somebody earns in a Jollibee or KFC. To them, 350 pesos an hour is an incredibly high wage.

Well, well, well ....

According to GlassDoor, Whippy's job, that of Communications Assistant, pays between Php 19,333 per month and Php 30,333 per month. Not Php 50,000 that he's claimed here. For him to earn that Php 50k, he'd need to be an Operations Manager (or equivalent senior post). But he isn't. And here's the proof:

​

His claims are flights of fantasy.

From my little understanding of the filipino term of "endo" I would suspect many companies over there do a considerable amount of interviewing for one simple reason

They have to continually replace the "endo" staff. So a company interviewing 100's per day isnt about not having the right skills but more about the contractualization of the workforce?

If many companies are doing it then even well run companies will be affected as staff continually churn.

And because it is so endemic in the Philippines many staff expect it but get the they can return after the period of endo. Its almost like their holiday periods.

So they do something else while waiting to return.

The Boracay situation could be fixed properly in about a year IF they closed all of the LGU`s and the DENR and contracted the rehab out to the Norwegians,and Germans,the Swedish and the Japanese.. They wouldn't even have to close the island down to do it either..
The country needs tourism and if the right expertise run the joint it can be 100% sustainable with minimal pollution issues etc IMO.

The whole problem is the way the Filipino run the system here, all the way from Elementary school and all the way up to the"elite" status in the Senate and just about every other institution in between!!
Another huge issue ,is it`s very hard for any of them to admit that they dont know something or that they are even capable of making a mistake.. Yeah,they know when they have fecked up alright,but to admit mistakes or to admit to some judgement of error whether it was based on a greed or corruption or whatever is pretty much beyond them unfortunately.. They need to shift the blame QUICKLY..So they are blaming the resorts and local business.
Since DU30`s rant about Boracay being a cesspit,the DENR and LGU`s have closed ranks and are pointing the bad finger at every resort in Panglao and Palawan etc... Most of these resorts believed that they had complied with every requirement up until they saw their resorts listed in the local newspaper as being "violators"!! Each and every one had business permits to operate legally signed by local authorities.

How about the nearly 20 year old plan to build an international airport on Panglao??
So 6 years ago they get the go ahead and start rebuilding the new airport roads..A Filipino contractor is awarded the contract for the middle road..4 lanes of
14" thick concrete..They finish the road in one year.
3 months later they are called back to fix fatal cracking! Cut a long story short,they are just now ripping up the whole 8/10 KM road and renewing! This time they are using the airport Japanese contractors!
The only reason the airport construction itself is on schedule is because the two contractors are both Japanese..Chiyoda Mitsubishi.

In regards,how it used to be.. There are thousands of isolated spots that have still hardly ever been seen by a westerner..
The beaches may be volcanic black and not a pretty white colour but they stretch for miles and are spotless and pristine..
Behind them an amazing back drop of provincial mountains and rice fields..
I`m not going to tell you or advertise where they are...Find them for yourself!

glassdoor is wrong. It is 40k basic at the Cebu IT Park office but profit share will always bring it up to 50k or slightly above if you get the minimum required 95% accuracy, which I did every month and have a full or almost full attendance record which I also had every month. The top 5 agents who get the closest to 100% accuracy all the times they are monitored over the month, can make up to 60-65k. That's in Cebu. the other two offices Stellar have, the new one in Angeles and the biggest one in Manila, pay more.