PCG to beef up ports’ security

Smuggling is growing more rampant in the country because there are government ports that do not even have a Philippine Coast Guard detachment, PCG commandant Vice Admiral Reuben Lista admitted yesterday.

Lista said he has ordered all PCG district and station commanders to report which ports in their jurisdictions have no PCG detachments so they could remedy the situation and comply with a presidential order to intensify the PCG’s anti-smuggling drive.

"I have directed all PCG district and station commanders to identify the government ports in their area that do not have any detachments. We’ll beef up monitoring in all ports," Lista said, citing as examples the ports of Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental and Lumbocom in Butuan City in Agusan del Norte.

Lista also revealed that the PCG is set to receive 29 new patrol boats over the next two years under soft loan programs.

Fourteen of the 29 boats are to come from Spain, nine from Japan and six from Australia. He described the vessels as "new, high-speed and sophisticated."

To boost the PCG’s manpower requirements, President Arroyo ordered the immediate secondment of the 2,000-strong Philippine National Police (PNP) Maritime Command to the PCG to step up the government’s anti-smuggling drive.

The secondment would augment the PCG’s 4,000 men but Lista said that even with 6,000 men, the PCG would still be short of men as the ideal is supposedly 9,700 men.

PNP chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. was ordered "to immediately work out" the secondment to realize the intensified anti-smuggling drive the President vowed in her State of the Nation Address last July 22.

The President, however, did not specify what would be the roles that would be filled by Lista and PNP Maritime Command director Chief Superintendent Rainerio Albano.

Official data show the PNP Maritime Command has 99 boats to patrol a coastline longer than that of the continental United States but 20 of the 99 are drydocked for repairs.

This leaves 79 boats to patrol more than 800 coastal towns where about 40 million Filipinos, or half the entire population, live, according to a PNP Maritime Command report.

The PCG, on the other hand, has seven large boats and 41 small craft that can match up with the powerful vessels of smugglers, Lista said.

But Lista complained that the PCG’s P1.13-billion budget is only as much as what the military is getting to pay for its Citizens’ Armed Forces Geographical Unit.

Meanwhile, Lista’s boss, Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza ordered the PCG to work with the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) and the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) to intensify its inspection of sea-going vessels.

In Department Order No. 2002-26, Mendoza ordered Lista, Marina administrator Oscar Sevilla and PPA general manager Alfonso Cusi to form joint inspection teams to inspect the seaworthiness of vessels.

"The team will have the authority to cause the withdrawal of the certificate of inspection and certificates of public convenience, if found necessary," Mendoza stressed.

Mendoza said the joint inspection teams are necessary to ensure that there will no longer be any finger-pointing among the maritime agencies in ensuring public safety at sea.

Mendoza said the authority of the inspection teams will be separate from the PCG’s mandate to conduct routine pre-departure inspection of vessels.