A query on ISPS: Are we compliant or not?

I must say that I was a bit stunned that Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) group chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan was headlined last Wednesday in the Business Section of The Philippine STAR virtually asking the government to bring the telecoms industry back to its former regulated state. If today, the Philippines has earned the title of "text capital" of the world, it is due to the deregulation of the telecoms Industry... and for us consumers, this means competition!

Just look at the ads of all the players of the telecoms industry in newspapers or television... this is just an example of how vibrant the telecoms industry has become because of deregulation. To my mind, what Mr. Pangilinan is in effect proposing is to send the telecoms industry back to the Jurassic Age when PLDT was a monopoly and yes, you couldn’t get a phone line unless you bribed the lineman!

Back in 1992, Cebu only had 50,000 telephone lines for a population of two million. Today, thanks to the deregulation policies brought forth by the Ramos administration, almost every other person on the street has a cellphone! I really don’t know how many landlines there are in Cebu today… but with Innove (formerly Islacom) and PLDT cornering the market, I’m sure there are more than enough landlines than we can handle. Regulate the telecoms industry once more? I don’t think so. If Mr. Pangilinan can’t hack it out against the competition, well the Americans have a favorite saying which goes "If you can’t stand the heat... then get out of the kitchen!"

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I was out of the country for most of July and returned only in the first week of August and one of the major issues that we’ve written a lot was the International Shipping and Port Security (ISPS) which supposedly took effect last July 1. Just when Cebu businessmen were worried sick that we would not meet the deadline set by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a week before she took her oath of office, no less than President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced before the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. (CCCI) that the Cebu Port Authority (CPA) would be ISPS-compliant before the July 1 deadline. Indeed, right on schedule, it was announced that the Cebu Port fully complied with the ISPS Code. Yes, it was formally announced that we were ISPS-complaint then.

Two months later, it would be nice to sit back and relax, knowing fully well that we are ISPS-compliant. But as journalists, we never take things for granted and knowing how we Pinoys do things at the last minute, I am inclined to believe that we just might have missed certain things when we got that ISPS certification. Incidentally, also on the last week of June, I saw a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) report on the ISPS and at that time, we learned that only 41 percent of ships had been certified, while only 30 percent of ports had met the ISPS requirements set by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). I thought back then how lucky we were that we met the July 1 deadline.

So while the President already told us that we are ISPS-certified, two months into this certification, I would like to have this confirmed. After all, a lot of things can happen in just two months! By coincidence, The Freeman’s Shipping Editor Ruth Mercado came up with a new story on the ISPS last Wednesday and voila, she discovered to her horror that the Philippines was not yet on the list of ISPS-compliant countries. It turned out that an IMO official has confirmed that the Philippines is not on the list of countries that have complied with the ISPS!

Brenda V. Pimentel, regional coordinator of the IMO regional presence for technical cooperation in Asia, revealed that the figures posted on the IMO website do not show any of the Philippine ports as ISPS-compliant. Pimentel apparently made the confirmation and official announcement of this during an ISPS seminar with ship owners on Aug. 23 at the New World Renaissance Hotel in Manila. Somehow, because this topic is of no importance to our Manila counterparts, the media didn’t make a big fuss about it.

If you asked the Office for Transportation Security (OTS), an agency created by Malacañang to enforce ISPS in the country, they would just give a report that some 40 port facilities and over 100 Philippine-registered ships serving international routes have been issued compliance certificates, most of which are valid for only six months or until December this year. But with The Freeman report by Mercado, it is crystal clear that something is terribly amiss. Perhaps someone was telling the President mere lies or fabrications.

If the IMO website gives no information about the Philippines being ISPS-compliant, then why did the OTS tell the President that we are ISPS-compliant?... So that Ate Glo would look good before the Cebuanos? Pimentel said the ISPS Code database is very important because it provides the first wave of information on ISPS compliance. Contracting governments, port state control officers, shipowners, ship operators and even port facility operators use the information from this database to find out who is ISPS-compliant and who is not.

We also learned that the US Coast Guard would soon be publishing a list of all port facilities posted on the IMO website. So if the Port of Cebu or the Port of Manila is not listed in the IMO website, we can assume that it will not also be in the list of the US Coast Guard. Right? In fact, The Freeman story on this issue was also featured in the US Coast Guard news. Therefore, ships coming from the Port of Cebu or Port of Manila will be subjected either to stringent inspection or control, which will most likely mean a delay in the trading of that ship. So once again, let’s ask the big question: Are we or are we not ISPS-compliant? Perhaps, we should let GMA answer this query! I’m sure that Ate Glo would blow her top when she realizes that she’s been fooled by the OTS people! Mind you, this is a serious problem because it will affect all our export businesses!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.