China the Beautiful

[changoo]

Due to the anticipated influx of Chinese students next year, civilian and police authorities of a southern Philippine city have agreed to the formation of a special police unit to provide the foreigners ample security while in the country, officials said on Thursday.

An expected 5,000 Chinese will be coming to Butuan city in Mindanao island's Caraga region by next year to study English proficiency who needed an ample security, according to city councilor Ryan Anthony Culima.

Culima told local radio the city government recently signed a memorandum of agreement with the Chinese Embassy regarding the educational exchange, and that the local government likewise pledged for providing security to the students.

The local police on Thursday confirmed to Xinhua the planned security arrangement, and according to Chief Superintendent Reynaldo Rafal, Caraga region police chief, a special tourist police would be mobilized to protect the Chinese students in their stay in Butuan and nearby areas.

"The tourist police forms as a specially-trained unit of the existing (Butuan) police station. The new police force would provide security not only to the Chinese students but also to all other tourists who will be visiting the region," Rafal told Xinhua by phone, adding police forces in areas known as tourist destinations like the surfing island-town of Siargao would be automatically converted into tourist police units.

Rafal said they are now on the stage of planning about the number of personnel that will compose the tourist police units and that these would be mobilized by the end of next month.

"We want local and foreign tourists here to feel safe," Rafal said.

The resource-rich southern Philippines is home to some of the country's scenic wonders but attacks by kidnap and extortion gangs and a stubborn leftist and Islamic insurgencies have affected domestic and foreign tourism arrivals in the region in the recent years, with tourists opting to safer destinations in the central and northern parts of the country.

The Philippines' tourism industry had also suffered a black eye following the hostage-taking incident in the capital Manila by a disgruntled former policeman on August 23 that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead.
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