Air, sea transport also messed up

The Philippines is a nation of mariners, with 250,000 Filipinos manning all ships that sail the seven seas. Yet the country is also tops in maritime disasters. The loss at sea of 4,352 lives in the 1987 collision of the M/V Doña Paz and M/T Vector is listed as the worst peacetime shipwreck. Following closely in death tolls are the sinking in 2008 of the M/V Princess of the Stars, 437 dead; M/V Doña Marilyn (1988), 389; M/V Don Juan (1980), 178; M/V Saint Thomas Aquinas (2013), 114; M/V Cebu City (1994), 73; M/V Princess of the Orient (1998), 70; and close to a dozen more with 50 or less fatalities each.

With such disaster record, one would think government agencies in charge of shipping would put safety first. The capsizing last July 2 of the motorized banca Kim Nirvana shows they haven’t shaped up. Sixty-two of the 173 passengers and 16 crew perished. Reason: careless top-heavy loading on the upper deck of 150 bags of cement and 100 sacks of rice, while passengers with light luggage stayed below. Predictably strong waves broke the outrigger and toppled the vessel over.

At once the Coast Guard and Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) blamed each other. The Marina had licensed the wooden-hull Kim Nirvana to operate, although unqualified since 2003. Memo Circular-190 requires Marina to phase out aged vessels and modernize the maritime industry. The Coast Guard for its part had cleared the “mis-loaded” craft to sail.

Later realizing that each was accountable, the Marina and Coast Guard joined hands to point at a third apparent culprit: the ship owner. They charged him with murder.

Yet shipwrecks will recur, as the Marina certifies aged vessels as seaworthy, and the Coast Guard allows them to sail.

 The Marina too has not begun to investigate the pervasive racket of altering ships’ Plimsoll Marks. Plimsolls are round metal plates with horizontal bar welded along shipside. Calculated by the ship maker, it designates the lowest level the vessel may settle into the water as it takes on load. Profiteering ship owners, however, illegally remove the mark and re-weld it up to a meter higher. That enables them illegally to overload more passengers and cargo. Marina inspectors in the Visayas are bribed to look the other way, on the pretext that vessels there ply only short inter-island hops.

Super Typhoon Yolanda’s storm surges in 2013 told a different story. The colossal waves tossed heavy cargo ships several tens of meters inland Tacloban City. The Plimsolls of the vessels visibly had been long altered. They had come from Manila and other ports in Luzon; meaning, while initially licensed in the Visayas, they had since brought the racket to beyond.

Air transport is in such mess too. Runway congestion goes on at the Manila International Airport. Since 2011 landing planes are made to circle the air, and those taking off must wait long minutes, for clearance. The stop-gaps not only imperil passengers’ lives but also cause costly business losses. The Philippines lost to China its bid to host the 2019 Basketball World Cup precisely due to poor airport infrastructures.

The airport general manager reportedly is seriously ill, so absents from work for weeks at a time. Yet he refuses to hand over authority to a more able sub. At the Cebu International Airport, construction has yet to start for a bigger, modern passenger terminal. The project was planned more than a decade ago, and the contract awarded in 2013.

The sea and air mess match that in land transport. Supposedly new world-class metal vehicle plates crumple under floodwaters. The heavy commuter train to the south of Metro Manila was incapacitated for months by stolen rail links. Roofs of light commuter trains leak under the rain; the agency in charge is too busy costume-partying to fix things. Maintenance of the medium commuter rail is left to unqualified but well-connected contractors. The public utility franchising board, instead of going after unlicensed, dilapidated buses nationwide, is busy fielding favored bus franchisees to augment the faulty commuter trains — and choke the big city with worse traffic.

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The Press is neither a cheering squad nor an attack dog. It’s not an orchestra that plays to a conductor’s beat. That needs to be stressed in light of recent headlines, for which newsmen unfairly were accused of bias or worse. The accusers either are dumb about the media or blinded by their own prejudices.

One columnist, not of this paper, prattles that all must, like him, attack Jojo Binay. Maliciously he claims that those unlike him can only be on the take. “Don’t you see on TV” how Senators Trillanes, Cayetano, and Pimentel expose the VP’s “plundering,” he screeches. “What are we waiting for – let’s put Binay in jail, or else he could become President.”

That hack is triply presumptuous. First, he thinks his hero senators are incapable to pin down Binay. Can’t Trillanes, via 21 televised bashings, claim credit for slashing Binay’s 45% poll rating to 25%? Then, the writer assumes that all newsmen, despite assigned news beats or preferred subject matters or own ongoing exposés, must drop everything to join the “pintakasi.” Has not the Ombudsman, in just three months from the start of the hearings, swiftly indicted Binay, while leaving unresolved older documented cases: overpriced rice imports, MRT maintenance and vehicle plate anomalies, and illegal mining grants? Third, he overestimates the media’s sway in elections. Do not the people, or the PCOS, decide who is to be President?

That columnist, it turns out, is not alone in his anti-Binay cause. Omnibus e-mailers to other writers and obvious trolls that swarm the newspapers’ online editions carry his line of attack. Just because they’re orchestrated doesn’t mean all others should join in.

Same with the contenders in the Iglesia ni Cristo hierarchy. One side lectured the media about its duty to the truth, so must report the alleged kidnappings – based solely on an anonymous blog. The other side twitted newsmen for alleged silence about bishops’ corruption. But in truth, what do reporters care about actions in a non-government organization? Both sides accused the Press of cowardice, just because newspapers cautiously sought out sources first before breaking the story.

Then there’s that hip-shooting party-list congressman. He snarls at a military-beat reporter for “presenting only the Army’s side and not interviewing my victimized peasants in the hinterlands.” There are other field correspondents assigned there, if he must know.

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