ILOILO CITY – A community has launched an online petition against jet skiers from Iloilo for allegedly intruding into a marine protected area in a highly popular tourist destination in Palawan.
MEMBERS of the Iloilo Watercraft Association (IWA) and their jet skis in El Nido, Palawan. (Vincent Tajanglangit Facebook)
In a petition at change.org, the community in El Nido town is calling on both the local government and national government agencies to explain why members of the Iloilo Watercraft Association (IWA) were “allowed to ride their jet skis illegally inside a protected area” in both El Nido and the neighboring town of Taytay.
The June 10, 2023 petition asked the local government unit (LGU) of El Nido, LGU of Taytay, the provincial government of Palawan, Kenn Palay who is allegedly working for the congressional representative for Palawan first district, the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), and the sub-agencies of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to explain why IWA members were given the go signal to jet ski when it is not allowed.
The IWA were allegedly riding jet skis within the El Nido-Taytay Managed Resource Protected Area (ETMRPA), which has 53,330 hectares of water area and 38,420 hectares of land.
“For sure, the Coast Guard has seen them. The PNP or the tourist police have seen them. And the LGU would have seen them. We have seen them. They were not necessarily hiding. They were loud and proud and confident that what they did was allowed,” said the group in a petition.
The petition also called on IWA to be penalized as well as declared persona non grata in El Nido and Taytay for the alleged blatant environmental violations.
In now deleted Facebook profiles of IWA and its member Vincent Tajanglangit, they were in Palawan not only to jet ski but also had a medical mission in the chain of island-destinations.