MIAA finds new way to oppress OFWs

Overseas Filipino workers are crying for help. Exempted from the P550-airport terminal fee when departing for jobs abroad, they’re about to lose the privilege. All for ease, as imagined by the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA).

Under a rule to take effect New Year’s, passengers no longer will line up to pay at the MIAA fee stall. Airlines are to bundle the P550 with the fare, and remit it to the MIAA. Whether the MIAA is adopting world practice or hiding its misuse of the hundred-million-peso take from the fees even just to clean the toilets or install drinking fountains is beside the point. OFWs will be forced to pay the P550 with the airline fare, and so lose their exemption.

The labor office has asked MIAA to suspend the rule till airlines fix their ticketing software to include the OFW exemption. But the old fogies running the MIAA would hear nothing of it. No way are they bothering the rule or the airlines for a measly 11 million workers. It matters not to them that P550 is a day’s wage for many OFWs. Much more, that the government — meaning, all its agencies — must enforce the rights guaranteed by the Migrant Workers’ Act.

So, what to do, now that OFWs are starting to buy airline tickets for the Christmas holidays? MIAA managers throw the problem to the labor department and OFWs: set up fee-refund stalls outside the airport terminal, exposed to sun and rain, and wait till we give the funds. After all, there are only 1,255 measly OFWs departing every hour.

*      *      *

Speaking of lines at government agencies, filers for recognition or reparation as martial law victims must bear long hours to be served. The Human Rights Violations Victims Claims Board terribly is undermanned. Compounding that are inefficient systems, and insufficient toilets, roofed waiting areas, chairs, signage, and canteens at its office in UP-Diliman. It seems that the makers and managers of the agency forgot that most victims of torture, rape, and illegal detention were in their late teens to 30s when fighting the Marcos dictatorship in 1972-1986. So they’re seniors now, frail with age and wounds from the struggle.

I felt their silent suffering under last Wednesday’s drizzle, and so gave the agency managers a piece of my mind. It does not impress that they work till past 10 p.m. processing the victims and heirs of the killed and disappeared. For, that only meant that the filers also had to stay that long, because there weren’t enough interview and help desks. There was an hour-long lecture on filling out applications, making me ask why they posted the forms on the Net for downloading if they thought those weren’t self-explanatory. It took me two-and-a-half hours to be given a number, luckily “49” out of over a hundred, then told to wait some more. It’s as if we were all miserable folks with nothing better to do, like work or keep house.

The managers conceded their defects, promised to do away with the filling-out talk, and formed two more queues personally to serve that day. I pointed out to them filers who had sailed all the way from Samar, and commuted from Bataan-Zambales, but unlike me had not wangled an appointment the previous week. I’d lead a riot if they told them to come back another day. Those folks couldn’t come earlier because they had to scrounge around for cash to secure the birth, marriage, and death certificates, affidavits, and other papers, not to mention the travel fare.

Too, the managers disclosed lapses by national officials. Like, in enacting the recognition-reparation, lawmakers thought that only the same 9,600 who had joined the 1987 class suit in Honolulu against Marcos estate would file again. They did not anticipate those who missed their chance then, or the “martial law babies” literary born to and raised in prison by illegally jailed moms. Worse, vaunted ex-activist Budget Sec. Florencio Abad only now is funding the setting up of regional claims offices. Yet the filing deadline is next week, Nov. 10. He must have spent the money first on the hated DAP (Disbursement Acceleration Program).

*      *      *

Thinking aloud is risky for a President. Noynoy Aquino found that out last week, after sharing with the foreign press his thoughts about the CALAX dispute. That Cavite-Laguna Expressway is battleground of the Ayala-Aboitiz joint venture versus giant San Miguel Corp. To cost P35.4 billion, the contract is awaiting final grant by P-Noy. But he said he is inclined to rebid it instead. That set off jeers in the business community.

At once eight business groups led by the Makati Business Club criticized the rebid option. Supposedly investors would lose trust in future infrastructure biddings because a fair and open one already had been made in CALAX’s case. What’s left is to enforce the results. Joining in the statement were the American, Australian-New Zealand, Canadian, European, and Japanese Chambers of Commerce in the Philippines, ?Employers Confederation of the Philippines, and Management Association of the Philippines.

The groups leaned towards Ayala-Aboitiz. The joint venture insists it won last June’s bidding fair and square. It had offered premium to the government of P11.6 billion, higher than two other bidders’, on top of the construction cost. So the work must be awarded to it, or else the image of other public-private partnerships will suffer. The groups also indirectly praised Public Works Sec. Rogelio Singson’s decision to disqualify SMC.

That DQ was what put P-Noy in dilemma. Singson had deemed SMC’s financial guarantee four days short of the required 180 days. But the conglomerate’s financiers certified that it was a typo, given that the right number of days was spelled out in the annex papers. When Singson stood pat on nixing SMC, the latter’s execs marched off and opened the bid in front of reporters. Its premium offer was an astonishing P20.1 billion, or P8.5 billion more than Ayala-Aboitiz’s. The ensuing public shock emboldened SMC to appeal straight to P-Noy to be upheld winner.

SMC is not without allies. Other business personalities belittled the statement of the eight groups. One, close to Malacañang, reminded that the head of Makati Business Club is a director of Ayala Corp. Another hinted that some of the eight might break ranks, because not consulted about the use of their names.

In Malacañang this week both parties appealed to Malacañang to be declared winner once and for all. Ayala-Aboitiz said a rebidding in effect favors SMC over the completed bidding. It and the losers earlier had expressed disinterest in a new bidding. SMC for its part said that while Malacañang has yet to rule on technicality versus P8.5 billion more cash to the government, it would accept any other option, including rebidding under the same or revised terms of reference. Significantly, both promised to abide by P-Noy’s final decision, and to not initiate any legal action against it.

*      *      *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

Gotcha archives on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459, or The STAR website http://www.philstar.com/author/Jarius%20Bondoc/GOTCHA

E-mail: [email protected]