Filming of the TV series “Survivor” is now going on full blast around Gota beach in Caramoan, Camarines Sur but except for five helicopters hovering daily above the town proper no one knows what is happening within the heavily guarded resort area.
Residents said that on one occasion trigger-happy guards fired warning shots when excursionists from a Naga City school tried to land on one of the islets.
Neither do municipal officials know what is happening except that tourists and residents themselves are barred from the resort area. A signboard near Talisay Port at San Jose, Camarines Sur, the jump-off point to Caramoan nearly two hours away, says Gota Beach is temporarily off-limits to visitors while installation of facilities is going on. The prohibition is expected to last long after the town fiesta on May 7 and 8 when many visitors will be in the remote coastal town to take a dip at Gota Beach and other fabulous beaches and islets aside from fulfi lling their religious vows.
The Camarines Sur provincial government, which has a stewardship agreement with DENR on around 300 hectares of the Caramoan National Park including Gota Beach, has built nearly a hundred units of cabanas and other accommodation facilities near Gota Beach and the adjoining Honongan Beach in time for the filming of the TV series with a cast of scores of Europeans and Americans. It is not known what other facilities will be put up by the Capitol which recently borrowed an astronomical P2.050 billion from the DBP purportedly to finance tourism projects.
Local officials however lamented that no coordination has ever been made by the provincial government with them. They said they could not give any answer everytime residents, piqued by the inconvenience of not being able to get to Gota Beach, ask what benefits will accrue to the town from the present filming activities at Gota Beach.
Some said the provincial government will receive a hefty sum from the “Survivor” producers but as usual no announcement has been made on the expected windfall. The provincial government has been characteristically secretive on financial ventures and has not even disclosed numerous calamity aids to the province coming from government entities and the private sector and even government auditors are mysteriously mum on such issues which the public ought to know under the imperative principle of transparency in governance.
