Friday, July 18, 2008 Tourism police needed in Negros: Atono prexy
ASSOCIATION of Tourism Officers in Negros Occidental (Atono) president Severino Pacete said he envisions a "start small" roadmap by prioritizing something which is manageable and work for something bigger in the future.
He said it is high time that the province creates a "tourism police," a special force tasked to implement tourism laws and handle tourism issues that the regular police forces do not have training at all.
"Security is not just the only concern of tourists or that of the local tourism implementing arm. A tourist sense of security includes area location and direction, language problems, culture differences thus demonstrating 'strange' behaviors and more importantly, visa and passporting advice. This includes health and rescue training, in fact," Pacete said.
"In other countries, they have a distinct uniform, a special tourist police station and are trained in foreign language," he added. "We need not follow those high-budgeted countries but we need especially trained police with distinct specialization to take care of this multi-million or perhaps multi-billion industry of ours on tourism."
"Tourists are totally different from us; they bring in money, therefore they must be treated in special ways so we increase the probability of their return," he said.
Pacete is targeting the tourism emphasis this September to start the project. (Gil Alfredo Severino)
