No more NAIA-3 timetable

The opening of the controversial Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal III remains uncertain, Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza said yesterday.

Mendoza admitted the opening of NAIA III cannot be definite since they have no target date due to safety concerns over its structural integrity. 

“Actually, it’s not really a matter of targets anymore. What is important is to make it very, very safe,” Mendoza said.

At present, the mothballed airport terminal has yet to undergo remedial works to ensure its structural integrity.

Mendoza said they have terminated Takenaka Corp., the company sub-contracted by the Philippine International Air Terminals, Co. (PIATCO) to build the terminal, due to its refusal to undertake the necessary repairs on NAIA III, which foreign experts found had serious structural defects.

Mendoza said Takenaka still has to complete an unfinished two percent of the airport construction project.

Mendoza said they are now looking for other contractors to undertake the retrofit and finish the airport construction.

It was learned that even the repair of the portion of the ceiling in the main terminal building that collapsed in April 2006 remained unfulfilled.

The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) ordered a structural check of the NAIA III structures after a portion of its ceiling collapsed last year.

Foreign experts Ove Arup and TCGI subsequently recommended the postponement of plans to open NAIA III after it found serious structural defects that made the facility unsafe.

According to Mendoza, Takenaka had disagreed with the findings of Ove Arup and TCGI about the structural defects in NAIA III.

MIAA general manager Alfonso Cusi, on the other hand, said the repair of the collapsed ceiling was not made pending the inspection made by a team commissioned by the Singapore-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).

The ICC is hearing the arbitration case filed by PIATCO against the government’s takeover of the terminal.

Cusi said that the inspection team from Singapore conducted their inspection late last month.

The government took over the terminal in December 2005 after the Supreme Court declared the PIATCO build-operate-transfer contract to build the terminal null and void and disadvantageous to the government due to onerous amendments made to the original contract.

As a result of the takeover and subsequent expropriation proceedings initiated by the government, PIATCO and its German partner Fraport AG filed separate compensation and arbitration cases before the ICC and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank in Washington D.C.