RETIRED lawyers of the Public Attorneys Office filed a damage suit Monday against Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and another official of the Department of Budget and Management for blocking their retirement benefits.
In a petition before a Quezon City regional trial court, the retirees also sought the immediate and full implementation of the PAO law.
Represented by PAO chief attorney Persida Rueda-Acosta, the retirees questioned the Budget Department’s legal opinion, which they said contradicted the PAO law.
The petitioners—Amelia Garchitorena, Bonifacio Guyot, Cynthia Vargas, Gaudencia Fineza Jr., Romeo Sunga, Teresita De Guzman, Jesus Garrucha Jr., Marcelo Cabana, Reynaldo Casas, Carmelito Sumile, Renato Cabrido, Florencio Diloy, Macapangcat Mama, Elidio Bacuyag, Oscar Melad and Arnulfo Singson—also named DBM chief legal Rowena Cadiz Ruiz as a respondent.
In blocking their benefits, the retirees said Abad violated the PAO law, which said they would receive benefits equal to those that prosecutors receive under the National Prosecution Service.
For the damage it has incurred to the old and some dying retirees, the PAO retirees asked that Abad and Ruiz be ordered to pay actual and compensatory damages to them.
The petitioners sought P400,000 in exemplary damages and P400,000 in moral damages.
Also on Monday, the assistant general manager of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines said a British consulting firm contracted by Transport Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya at a cost of P66 million to solve the congestion at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport has yet to deliver any results in the Naia Runway Optimization project.
The CAAP official, Rodante Joya, said NATS Services Ltd. and Schema Konsult Inc., an expert in air traffic management, have not provided any recommendations on the optimal configuration of the airport’s intersecting runways.
CAAP spokesman Eric Apolonio said nothing has been heard from the consultants after they signed the contract on June 30, 2015.
Apolonio added that the agency has yet to hear from any transport official involved in the project.
Joya said that the consultants didn’t even bother to sit down with the CAAP, which had to implement its own solutions to reduce the number of delayed flights at the airport.
Based on its timetable, NATS Services was supposed to improve air traffic movement from 40 to 60 flights per hour by July this year.
In the first six months of the 12-month contract, NATS was to evaluate the airport’s current airspace, runway, and terminal capacities; air traffic and surface operations; runway access points; and ATC training.
While having jurisdiction over the country’s airports the CAAP controls only the navigational operations of the congested Naia.
The Manila International Airport Authority and CAAP were then supposed to implement the improvement measures.
“We don’t know if there really is any output. It hasn’t been given to us,” Apolonio said.
In an earlier statement when the project was awarded, Abaya said that the P66-million fee for the foreign consultants was “money well spent.”
“We are excited to work with one of the world’s best firms in the industry towards optimizing Naia’s runway capacity. With NATS, which has worked on the Dubai, Singapore, and Heathrow Airports, we can expect safer, more efficient operations, and much less flight delays and cancellations,” Abaya said.
Abaya has yet to respond to questions about the deal. With John Paolo Bencito