Is NAIA-3 really state-of-the-art?

The 1996 plan was for it to be state of-the-art, a showcase of Filipino taste and technology. But as construction nears completion, inspectors are finding out that NAIA Terminal-3 could more display the worst in man.

Presidential adviser Gloria Tan Climaco told Senate investigators last week she has uncovered major defects in the international terminal.

Some have to do with safety and efficiency, others with the convenience of passengers, well-wishers and workers who would use it. All told, she said, the quality-assurance firm Japan Airport Consultancy Inc. had noted 126 deviations by contractor Piatco from the government-approved designs and specifications of June 2000.

Quoting JACI, Climaco cited the electronic switching system – the nerve center of Terminal-3 – which Piatco allegedly bought from second-hand supplier Fuji Haya. Agents from Germany’s Fraport AG, reported to secretly own 61.44 percent of Piatco, confirmed to her that brand-new units could have been bought from Europe at lower price but higher quality.

The overprice ran to millions of pesos that builder Piatco will charge to airport users as 16 types of fees when it operates Terminal-3 for 25 years. Worse, Climaco said, airport safety was also compromised. The financial- technical flap was one reason for the falling out last year of Fraport with the Cheng family that on paper holds 50 percent management control of Piatco. Fraport, which owns and operates among others the Frankfurt airport, is supposed to provide technological expertise to the consortium.

While Climaco was testifying on Piatco’s work quality, the NAIA Authority announced it has stopped the firm to stop erecting a three-story cargo terminal on unauthorized area. NAIA officer Florencio Montalbo Jr., government’s project manager for Terminal-3, said Piatco was about to finish building the cargo facility on an area designated for a wastewater treatment plant and parking lot.

Hideaki Iida, chief of JACI’s quality-assurance division, had alerted Montalbo on Aug. 12 about the works his inspectors discovered. Piatco spokesmen claimed that the construction of the cargo facility was "part and parcel of NAIA-3 and is covered by the concession agreement". But Iida said he "was not aware of any written approval by the Philippine government to construct a cargo terminal in this location."

In telling Piatco to stop the works, Montalbo agreed with Iida’s line that "until such time that we are informed otherwise, we view the current construction ... to be a non-conformance with the approved tender design." The cease-and-desist order puts in doubt Piatco’s claim to open Terminal-3 by Nov. 26. This early, though, its spokesmen are saying government will have to pay Piatco $50,000 for every day’s delay in the inaugural. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, however, had formed a six-man team led by Economic Planning Sec. Dante Canlas to determine what should be done with the Piatco contract in which Climaco had found 27 onerous clauses and six violations of the law.

Sen. Sergio Osmeña III noted that Piatco chose to construct the cargo facility ahead of a 2.7-km access road to (Centennial) Terminal-2. Part of Piatco’s original $350-million bid in 1996 was to link Terminal 2- and -3’s cargo facilities with an underground tunnel. The plan was junked. Instead of Piatco bankrolling the tunnel, a clause now states that government must pave the access road, or else default on the build-operate-transfer contract.

Osmeña said the Chengs, who had built a fortune on airport cargo handling, "want a monopoly of all operations at NAIA-3." He explained: "The top half of airplanes fly in for passengers, while the lower half is for cargo. You can just imagine the volume of cargo that Piatco would want to handle on its own." Sen. Robert Barbers chimed in: "If Piatco was not able to conform with international safety and efficiency standards by erecting a cargo terminal ... even without government approval, it is highly possible that other violations may have been committed."

Climaco will submit to them this week a list of the 126 deviations, grouped into issues of safety, quality and efficiency. She disclosed to The STAR six items, in addition to the electronic switching system and the cargo facility:

• The glass on giant picture windows is one-fourth thinner than specified. "It will not only rattle from vibrations caused by jets," Climaco warned, "it may also break and injure people."

• Piatco converted the duty-free shopping area adjacent to Terminal-3 into a shopping mall open to the public. Fraport reported to Climaco that "the structure is as high as a cathedral, but housing a virtual flea market." For security reasons, Fraport fears, US and Europe aviation authorities will not allow their airlines to take off and land at Terminal-3.

• During excavation works, Piatco was expected to link Terminal-3’s drainage canal to that of Terminals-1 and -2 and onto the main sewers. Climaco said it left this unfinished somewhere between the two terminals, "probably to cut costs." Managers of the two terminals complained to her recently of flooding at the tarmacs and runways.

• Piatco installed only one instead of three air-conditioning systems in the multi-hectare complex. "If that system conks out," Climaco fanned herself, "the whole terminal will sizzle." Air-con breakdown is a frequent complaint at Terminal-1 which presently caters to all international flights except Philippine Airlines.

• Piatco also installed only one fire sprinkler system instead of split units specified in the blueprint. "If smoke triggers the sprinkler at one end of the terminal, everybody will be drenched all the way to the other end," Climaco shuddered.

• JACI noted a seemingly innocuous deviation: the use of Chinese granite for flooring, of thickness usually found on kitchen tops in middle-class homes. This was no oversight, Climaco said. She will submit this week documents to show that a certain Emmanuel Cuevas, a friend of the Chengs, had made commissions getting Piatco managers to sign supply and sub-contracting deals. Papers indicate that Cuevas got a 12-percent slice of the $1.5-million granite supply as "marketing fee." Through Cuevas, Climaco said, certain Piatco insiders earned hundreds of millions of pesos for approving excavation works and equipment purchases or rentals. She said the insiders also asked prospective lease-holders at the duty-free shop-cum-mall to pay P5 million up front, plus three-percent slice of sales during the 25-year concession.

State-of-the-art? It seems more like the state of the nation that the President described and vowed to fight last July: crime and corruption.

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