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ILOILO City – The City Tourism and Development Office (CTDO) hopes that tourist arrivals will continue to increase this September until December, a period it considers as “convention months.”
CTDO head Junel Ann Divinagracia assured the public there would be no security issues during big conventions because the Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) and city government are closely working to ensure the safety of guests.
The city police recently revealed weekly crime incidents posted a significant decrease.
There were a total of 77 crime incidents from Aug. 28 to September 2017 compared to 132 crime incidents from Aug. 29 to Sept. 4, 2016.
CTDO data showed domestic tourist arrivals in this city increased in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the same period last year.
There were 263,865 domestic tourists in the first three months of the year, higher than the 238,865 arrivals from January to March last year.
There were 91,039 domestic visitors in January; 82,640 in February; and 90,186 in March this year – up from last year’s recorded 82,015 visitors in January; 74,637 in February; and 81,625 in March.
Divinagracia said most of the tourists witnessed festivities such as the Dinagyang Festival in January and Paraw Regatta in February.
“Based on our record, there was a surge of domestic tourist arrivals. Most of them are fond of witnessing our cultural festivities,” said Divinagracia.
Meanwhile, ICPO data showed it conducted 12 anti-drug operations which resulted to the arrest of 18 persons and confiscation of 63 sachets of shabu from Aug. 28 to Sept. 3, 2017.
“This resulted to the variance of 55 or a drop in crime volume by 41 percent,” said ICPO operations chief Superintendent Jowel Saliba.
“We can assure our community that Iloilo City is peaceful and very livable in terms of peace and order situation. We would like to appeal to the public to also help us in maintaining the peace and order situation because this is not only the concern of the police but also of everybody,” stressed Saliba.
The decrease in the crime incidents could be attributed to improved police visibility and putting in place crime prevention measures.
“We have the enhance management police operations through managing the police patrol operations wherein our policemen are deployed in areas identified as crime-prone,” Saliba added./PN
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