Tacloban seniors tapped as tour guides

TACLOBAN CITY, Jan. 4  -- The Department of Tourism (DOT) and the city government here have trained senior citizens as tour guides to equip them with the necessary skills to attend to visitors and talk about the cultural and natural heritage in this city and nearby areas.

Under the “Gabay Turista” program, the local government and the tourism department picked 50 retired teachers and government workers, to join the training late December.

“It’s not hard to train them because it is given that senior citizens are well-versed of the local history,” said DOT senior tourism operations officer Norberto Lumbre in an interview on Thursday.

The DOT will also expand the program to other towns and cities in the region frequently visited by tourists, according to Lumbre.

As partners in promoting local tourism, elderlies will be trained on proper in-house and community tour guiding instead of outdoor activities considering their physical limitations.

Experts toured the selected senior citizens to Sto. Niño Parish Church, Tacloban City Hall ground, Madona of Japan monument, Leyte Capitol Building, Sto. Niño Shrine, Yolanda Shipwreck Memorial, San Juanico Bridge and nearby Yolanda Memorial.

Also included in the itinerary are the Palo Metropolitan Cathedral, McArthur Park and National Shrine, and Yolanda mass graves in Palo and Tanauan towns.

The group also visited the Korean Army Contingent camp at the Government Center in Palo town. The site served as headquarter of Korean Army contingent that helped in the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Leyte towns pummeled by the 2013 super typhoon.

Eastern Visayas Association of Tour Guides President Butz Eguia, who joined familiarization tour, said the senior citizens had good potentials to become tour guides considering their knowledge of the local history.

“They will also undergo information gathering training because they have to tell new stories, trivial, and not available in books or internet,” Eguia told Philippine News Agency.

Claire Co, a former teacher in Tacloban for 45 years said that it was a refreshing experience learning new information about places that they usually visited like the McArthur Park.

“The tour guides tell us some information that we do not know about the Leyte Landing, which is helpful to us because it updated the information that we already had and corrected some information that we perceived to be true,” Co added. (RTA//PNA)