Davao City is most visited destination for Lakbay Aral

Duterte, Hotline 911 are main attractions

Davao City is most visited destination for Lakbay Aral

DAVAO CITY – At five visits each week, this city may be one of the most visited places in the Philippines under the “lakbay aral” program, a supposedly visitors' learning travel program.

The Community Relation Program Office of the city government has logged an average of five visits from local governments across the country under their Lakbay Aral program and from private groups and institutions.

Oscar Casaysay, office coordinator, said that the city has been receiving this many visits for several years already, and added that the city government has officially assigned his office to do the coordination work.

The size of the delegation varied, from a low of ten to as large as 300. “Many are really big delegations of more than 50 and 100. Many are councilors, provincial board members, vice mayors. Mostly government officials and personnel.”

“There are also from the universities, civic organizations, medical associations,” he said. “And there are many walk in delegations and they would just call us up for courtesy calls.”

He said that all these visits came from all over the country.

Most of requests were about learning about how the Emergency Hotline 911 operates and the best practices in local governance “but all wanted to hear and see Mayor Rodrigo Duterte in person”.

“While many Lakbay-Aral travels are believed to be junket travels, we assure them that they would really have a learning experience about the city, its governance and what to expect,” he said.

“We would ask them to sit down with us for a while, to listen to our briefing and to take them around to selected locations,” he said.

What also attracted, and surprised, the visitors were innovations in governance.

“They would be surprised and amazed that we have representatives from the tribal communities and that we have designated deputy mayors for the major Muslim groups in the city,” said Resci Angelli R. Rizada, this year's Mutya ng Dabaw, whose many duties also include receiving Lakbay Aral delegations.

Rizada said many local government delegations would suggest that “your mayor and his programs in the city should be shared to the rest of the country”.

“They should not be applied only in Davao City,” Rizada said, quoting a delegation from Albay, composed of councilors, provincial board members and members of the Sangguniang Kabataan.

She said a similar statement was aired recently by a Lakbay Aral delegation from Iloilo City, composed of councilors and their vice mayor.

“They wanted the mayor to run for President, and they assured that they would work for his election,” Rizada said.

Casaysay said that the visitors also “appreciated it at how we implemented the No Smoking law and they were interested at how this was implemented”.

He said that the city has not quantified the benefit of these surge of the study tours but he said that this has helped the city economy in terms of revenues as well as energizing further the activities of the travel and tour operators.

He said that his office has already accredited 20 tour operators in the city to provide the transportation needs of the visitors

“We have agreed with them that they take the visitors at least to the Museo Dabaw, the People's Park and the 911,” he said.

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