By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo / Special to the BusinessMirror
MORE officials have been appointed to the Department of Tourism (DOT) and its attached agencies, including a classmate of President Duterte, while four of its current officers were given higher responsibilities.
Promoted to Undersecretary was Rolando Cañizal and to assistant secretary, Eden Josephine Laraño David. Promoted, too, to assistant secretary, was lawyer Reynaldo Ching.
Until his promotion, Cañizal was assistant secretary for Tourism Planning and officer-in-charge of the Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA). David was the DOT Davao region’s chief tourism operations officer, while Ching was the DOT’s director for Legal Services.
All three rose from the ranks, with Cañizal now serving his 25th year at the DOT, while David and Ching each serving 18 years in the agency.
Also appointed undersecretary was Falconi Millar, legal counsel of the National Association of Independent Travel Agencies Philippines Inc., which Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo had headed before her appointment as Cabinet secretary. DOT insiders had earlier intimated that Teo was eyeing the Tourism and Promotions Board chief operating officer post for Millar.
All four officials were sworn into office by Teo last Friday, along with Vicente Pelagio Angala, newly appointed COO for the Duty Free Philippines Corp. (DFPC), and Bienvenido Chy, general manager of the PRA.
Angala, a graduate of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, was a department manager at DFPC. Chy, a law graduate from San Beda College and classmate of Duterte, was the head of the legal division of the Bureau of Immigration.
Meanwhile, Cañizal’s was the chief architect of the National Tourism Development Plan in 2011, a road map that plotted the directions, policies and programs that would propel the growth of Philippine tourism by 2016. He had also helped foster tourism convergence programs with the departments of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), of Transportation, and of Social Welfare and Development, and other support agencies to tourism, as well as the institutionalization of a capacity-building program on local tourism statistics to harmonize data collection and reporting among tourism establishments and local government units.
Prior to this, he was also instrumental in formulating the National Ecotourism Strategy in 2001, which led to the development of an Ecotourism Standard and Certification Program, as well as pilot programs involving indigenous peoples, women, out-of-school youth, fishermen and local communities.
In a text message, Cañizal told the BusinessMirror he will “continue to handle the DOT convergence with the DPWH, international cooperation projects with the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and foreign-assisted projects. I will also handle the Administration sector.”
For her part, David will now head the newly created Mindanao office based in Davao, tasked to implement the sustainable and inclusive tourism agenda for the region.
“I welcome the challenge of putting Mindanao in a better position in terms of tourism administration, infrastructure development and promotions,” she said in a news statement. David herself, hails from Mindanao and has decades-long experience promoting the various tourist sites in the region.
David said the region has the potential to be a world-class tourist destination, although it requires substantial development work.
“First in the order of things, we have to improve access and enhance tourism infrastructure. The basic infrastructure support has to be in place to usher in the needed developments for tourism to flourish in the island. Access is primordial to get to the tourist spots via air, land and sea transport.”
She has already commenced the programs on land and air connectivity: “Prioritizing roads that lead to tourist spots with no distinction of being a national or local road as long as this brings the tourists to the destination, will now be intensified with the goal of the DOT and DPWH in order to reach 80 percent of road connectivity in Mindanao.”
A series of air connectivity projects are in full swing for four gateways, including Davao City, Cagayan de Oro City, Zamboanga City and Siargao.
“The objective is to build on the routes’ development for the airlines to take on the said connectivity requirement, thus, investing in the flights to bring in the travelers direct to the location from the feeder countries like Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia and Korea, to name a few,” David said.
The new assistant secretary for Mindanao is also keen on further developing the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asia Growth Area (BIMP-Eaga) where the Philippines heads the Joint Tourism Development Cluster.
The development of the BIMP-Eaga region has been listed as one of the top 10 priority programs of the new administration.
1 comment
I sincerely hope that the present leadership at DOT will surpass whatever revenues and visitor’s volume that last administration achieved through the former Secretary Jimenez. And yes the “Food Challenge” at Asia Food Channel was a very successful marketing concept they initiated is nowhere to be seen now, Why? And Usec Bong Bengzon’s name is also nowhere to seen even if he was the second-in-command of then Secretary Jimenez. The challenge Ms. Teo and the rest of her team is to target what a single Hawaii island has achieved in one year, US$12 B in revenues! Finally a bigger challenge is the concept ” sustainable tourism and sustainable energy” which was proposed during Arroyo’s administration through a well respected undersecretary of DENR.