Manila airport chief replaced while cleaning old mess

Confusion reigned at Manila International Airport Wednesday, Oct. 26. News flashed at 10:30 a.m. that general manager Cesar Chiong, appointed only 100 days ago, had been replaced. But Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista’s spokesman denied it.

Chiong was then co-presiding the MIA board meeting when phoned to relinquish his post to Jose Arturo Tugade. Attendees were heads of other aviation-related agencies, MIA managers and staff. News followed of Tugade’s appointment signed by President Bongbong Marcos five days earlier.

Faces of Chiong’s new 30-man team fell. Those of old sidelined ones lit up. Tugade is the youngest son of their appointer, former transport boss and MIA chairman Arturo Tugade.

MIA old-timers said it was a bad time to change leadership. They’re anticipating heavy passenger traffic during this long All Saints/All Souls weekend. As well, squeezing into the congested MIA runway diverted flights from the Mactan-Cebu International Airport accident. Then there’s the incoming Christmas rush of balikbayans and domestic travellers.

Chiong is a retired airline exec. He was just mid-way into familiarizing himself with various international airport concerns: passenger comfort, flight scheduling and promptness, operations, finances, security, overseeing 54 outside agencies’ MIA detachments like Customs-Immigration-Quarantine, and more. His baptism of fire came last Sept. 16 when Terminal-3 momentarily suffered power outage. Thirty-one international flights were delayed and 16,000 passengers queued seven hours at immigration booths because computers wouldn’t reboot. A troubleshooter solved the mess by disconnecting the network from the dead batteries of the uninterrupted power system and plugged it to the wall outlet.

Tugade will go through the same learning curve. The lawyer has no aviation experience. Paternal coaching may help only a bit since the elder merely chaired the MIA board but did not run the facility.

Chiong has been striving to set things right at MIA. Will Tugade follow suit? Among the messes there in 2016-2021 exposed in Gotcha were:

(1) P700-million overpriced replacement of Terminal-1 baggage conveyor belt that merely needed repair, exposed by private-sector directors Leoncio Nakpil and Leonardo Lopez;

(2) P660-million overpriced Terminal-2 facelift in which Lopez said substandard materials were used;

(3) P300-million computerization that did not include crucial accounts receivables, thus the ballooning to P3.8 billion of unpaid collectibles from airlines, hangar lessors and restaurant-souvenir shop concessionaires. For questioning this, Director Helen Osias, a holdover from the previous Board, was no longer invited to subsequent meetings;

(4) Award of a 25-year rehab contract to a firm worth P18 billion, merely one-third of MIA Authority’s P47-billion assets, thus violating the Build-Operate-Transfer Law. Had it not been exposed by then-Rep. Jericho Nograles, the firm would have collected and increased terminal and other fees, and replaced 14,000 regular and contractual workers;

(5) Award to a MIA in-house lawyer’s son-in-law, without Board approval, of a two-year lease of a Terminal-3 commercial space, which he in turn subleased long-term at triple the price to an airline in dire need of a ticketing office (complaint filed with Ombudsman); award to the lawyer’s daughter of a 10-year lease of two MIA lots and forcing the long-existing gasoline stations to pay to her instead of directly to MIA (an ex-GM used to hold the anomalous leases);

(6) P100-million payment in 2019, without Board approval or budget allocation, supposedly for construction of Terminal-1 45 years earlier, including unfounded six-percent interest per year;

(7) Hiring of janitorial and other service firms owned by managers;

(8) Franchising of exclusive airport taxis owned by managers;

(9) Grant of restaurant-shop concessions to managers’ relatives and associates;

(10) Sudden doubling to P24 million of a decades-long grass cutting contract on supposed but unverified equipment upgrade;

(11) Award of MIA property to a Covid RT-PCR test clinic to a front of two high officials then, one in the transport department, the other in Malacañang (another clinic’s higher offer was rejected);

(12) Purchase of substandard passenger benches that didn’t last six months, supposedly imported but made in Bulacan by the high transport official;

(13) Purchase of substandard and non-maintenance of Terminal-3 air bridges;

(14) Letting aircraft remain on the tarmac for repair without congestion penalties and instead of being sent to hangars;

(15) Management’s defiance of a 2018 Board directive to place in a special DBP trust account P1 billion in terminal fees returned by airlines for unused, unflown and cancelled tickets and from exempted overseas Filipino workers. Managers alibied that the funds were not MIA’s and therefore must be retained in current bank account earning only 0.1 percent interest a year. Yet, they time-deposited for higher interest current funds slated for payouts: P161.2 million for the Terminal-2 rehab contractor and P18.9 million in Bayanihan 2 “ayuda” to employees. State auditors said this resulted in foregone income of P14.3 million in 2020 and P17.9 million in 2021 alone.

*      *      *

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

Follow me on Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/2p93kxm9