Tag Archives: tourismPH

komentaryo

Wanda Teo and the tale of the traveling “little people” OR, a whiff of corruption (Part 2)

It was in June 2017 when I started receiving information from Department of Tourism employees about Duterte appointee Wanda Tulfo Teo. It was seven months after the blind item about a government official who had asked for free shoes, shopping GCs, and 150 tickets to watch a theater production at a mall — which she denied. It was soon after this column was written, speaking about Teo’s incompetence and cluelessness about the environment and sustainability, given her ‘excitement’ over Nicolodeon building a development project in Coron Palawan.

At this point, Teo was a year into office and DOT employees had already given her enough time to prove herself as a competent, trustworthy government official. Alas, what was revealed in the seven-page letter to the Office of the President’s Presidential Complaint Center (stamped received June 9 2017), was a Teo leadership controlled by her Chief Of Staff Arlene Mancao who was defined as a “tyrant” by the employees. It also spoke about how Teo runs the DOT. (more…)

komentaryo

A whiff of corruption at DoT

President Duterte has made a big deal about how his government is transparent and incorruptible. We have proven the former false. Given a toothless Freedom of Information (FOI), the threats and attacks on media and critics, and the all-around culture and rhetoric of violence and propagation of fear – we all now know that transparency is nothing but a soundbite.

The latter? Well, as with the previous government, we are seeing how sometimes, it’s not even corruption that is the problem as it is selfish interests that serve no one but the elite in government and the oligarchs they protect. Case in point: an anti-people tax reform policy and PUV modernization, an infrastructure program that will bring us “hell” (according to Sec. Ben Diokno) and fatten up our foreign debt, the militarization of Lumad communities, the protection of military and police officials – including those that do wrong.

Ah, but as with Daang Matuwid, President Duterte insists that corruption is one of our biggest problems, and as such, he has said often that just a “whiff of corruption” and a government official would be fired.

One wonders when he’s going to smell the stench of what’s allegedly going on at the Department of Tourism (DoT). (more…)

komentaryo

A portrait of a Tourism Secretary as failure

For almost a year now we have listened to a Department of Tourism (DOT) with a Secretary Wanda Tulfo Teo, that has no vision, no gameplan, no clear sense of what tourism is even supposed to be about, given the state of the nation.

You listen to Teo speaking with Pinky Webb on CNN Philippines and you realize she still knows absolutely nothing a year into her job. All she has as far as a tourism plan is concerned is an excitement about the investments that are coming in from China, and the interest in having international beauty pageants in the Philippines again and again.

Neither of those two things is what a sustainable, pro-people, environmental tourism plan makes. But what would someone with no credentials know?

The only two qualifications of Mrs. Teo to become DOT Secretary: (1) she owned a travel agency for Mt. Apo hikers which meant inevitably contributing to the degradation of this protected area, and (2) she’s a Tulfo. (more…)