Lai See | Hong Kong travel to Philippines surges despite government's black alert

Recent events have highlighted the absurdity of the government's attempts to give sensible advice on outbound travel. There are now some 16 countries that warrant an amber alert on the government's outbound travel alert website. This advises travellers to "monitor the situation and exercise caution". The list includes Malaysia, India, Pakistan, and Thailand. Egypt and Lebanon are given a red alert, which advises avoiding non-essential travel. A black alert warns to avoid all travel.

Here we find Syria which is undergoing a vicious civil war and the Philippines, which in the opinion of our government, is just as dangerous. This makes nonsense of the travel alert since the Philippines is nowhere as dangerous as Syria.

It gets a black alert because of a one-off event in Manila when a badly handled hostage-taking incident in August 2010 resulted in the deaths of seven Hong Kong tourists and their tour guide. Interestingly, there is no warning to avoid the US after the Boston bombing.

Despite the dire threats of thermonuclear war from North Korea's Kim Jong-un, our government has not offered any advice. Nor have people been advised to steer clear of Shanghai and its environs where bird flu lurks. Fortunately, the travelling public is able to take a more realistic view of risk in the Philippines. We see that foreign visitors there hit a record high of almost one million for the first two months of the year, up 15 per cent on the comparable period last year. Visitors mainly came from Korea, the US, Japan and mainland China. Interestingly visitors from Hong Kong for the period soared 98 per cent over last year to 23,000. It is surely time to stop this irresponsible, politically motivated farce and drop the black alert for the Philippines.

We are waiting with some anticipation for the public forum on Thermal Technology for Waste Management in Metropolises on May 7 where the case for incineration will be put. There will be five speakers including Dr Lee Potts, technical manager (energy) for AECOM, which is the consultant to the Hong Kong government on waste. He has argued in favour of incineration over other technologies such as plasma gasification.