Philsca president OKs transfer of flying school

MANILA, Philippines - The recently appointed president of Philippine State College of Aeronautics (Philsca) has signed a memorandum of agreement agreeing to the school’s transfer to a previously “unacceptable” relocation site found to be prone to floods and ground shaking.

Dr. Bernard Ramirez, who was elected president of the country’s only state-funded flying school just late last month, said that he had signed earlier this week the MOA with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and its  private sector partner, with the due authority given by the Philsca Board of Trustees chaired by Commission on Higher Education chairman Emmanuel Angeles.

Ramirez said that while he had signed the MOA, the chairman of the BCDA, former Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff General Narciso Abaya, had not yet done so, since it needed to undergo “review” by the BCDA board.

Officials and students of the said school had previously aired strong objection to their transfer to the spanking new campus built for them by the BCDA and a property firm in exchange for their current 1,700-hectare campus in a prime property along Andrews Avenue across the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal III in Pasay City.The new campus sits along the West Service Road of the South Luzon Expressway in Pasay.

Philsca had earlier received a Geo-Hazard Assessment Report of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) which validated previous concerns raised by Philsca officers about the flooding problem and earthquake faultline concerns on their proposed relocation site.