BORACAY RUSH: Travel applications swamp Aklan’s QR code system

By Jennifer P. Rendon

The Aklan provincial government announced on Monday, Nov 22, 2021 that it will process applications for travel to Boracay scheduled within seven days.

Atty. Selwyn Ibarreta, Aklan provincial administrator, made the clarification after the Provincial Government of Aklan issued an advisory to all tourists going to Boracay Island amid glitches in securing QR codes for travelers to the popular island destination.

The advisory reads “As we will be upgrading the Aklan Quick Response (AkQuiRe) in the coming days, only applications submitted seven (7) days prior to date of travel will be accommodated. Those who have already filed their application in advance before this advisory will be affected and will be processed as usual.”

But in a telephone interview, Ibarreta clarified that processing time is seven days within the intended travel since their system is overwhelmed by applications they receive in a given day.

“There were those who applied that will travel late December pa. So, our system easily gets inundated. Some applications, natabunan. So, if we received a few thousand applications a day, there is a tendency those other applications will be pulled behind by new ones,” he said.

In some instances, the validating team could not check old applications that were sent.

Because of the volume of applications, there were instances that only recent applications could be scrutinized.

As such, applications of travel beyond the 7-day period will be bounced back to the travelers.

“If today is November 23, we would only process applications from now and November 30,” he said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Ibarreta said they were able to process almost 5,000 applications.

Since the local government began accepting fully vaccinated tourists without the negative RT-PCR test result, tourist arrivals have spiked.

“We see an increase of around 200 to 300 percent in tourist arrivals,” Ibarreta said.

The bulk of travelers are from Western Visayas, particularly the city and province of Iloilo.

“That’s why we would limit for now the number of applications that are coming in,” he said.

But Ibarreta said they are working how to decongest the QR system which is used as contact tracing for visitors.

“Right now, upon filling up of the health declaration card, the traveler will then submit the booking, vaccination certificate or card or RT-PCR test results, identification card, you will be immediately issued with a QR code,” he said.

The papers are still subject to validation. Upon validation, if there is something amiss with your application, the QR code will be invalidated.

There are tourists, though, who claimed that such process is not in line with the Department of Tourism (DOT)’s call to simplify the travel requirements.

“That’s already simplified. Upon submission of requirements, we will be issuing a QR code. We couldn’t streamline it beyond that because we are still guided by the carrying capacity of tourist arrival, as set by the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources,” Ibarreta said.

He added that they couldn’t just get rid of the QR code system.

“I’m sorry but we couldn’t get rid of that. We would be needing that for our contract tracing. How would we know if there are people who were found positive in the island. Or sila mismo?” he said.

That’s one way of monitoring, he added.

Last week, the local governments of Aklan and Malay were bombarded with complaints after some tourists failed to get on their flights after failing to secure a QR code.

Around 20 tourists complained over social media that they failed to board their flight because they have no QR code to present to the airline.

An inter-agency meeting was immediately conducted to address the problem.

The Aklan provincial government has vowed to hire more personnel and increase the number of computers to address the concern.