"What’s happening at the airport?"
"What’s happening at the airport?"
This is definitely ironic and decidedly unacceptable.
Just as we are all focused on battling the COVID-19 outbreak trying to contain the spread and enjoining one and all to abide by the health protocols as we endeavor to start life under a new environment, now we are faced with this abominable draining of billions of pesos in hard-earned PhilHealth contributions. This was through all sorts of machinations by those, of all people, who are supposed to be at the forefront of providing much needed medical care to a suffering public.
Not content with their decades-long plunderous activities, paying billions of pesos as 'benefits cover' for suspiciously contrived maladies to the point of exceeding official DoH recorded cases (as if there's epidemic every so often): in one year there was an explosion of cataract cases, on another dialysis and still another pregnancies, the PhilHealth mafia went overboard and crowded each other out in a frenzied effort to disburse the quick response P30 billion anti-COVID 19 allocation called Interim Reimbursable Mechanism (IRM).
Now that Congress and Malacanang have come around to getting to the bottom of this mess, get those involved to account for their misdeeds and, hopefully, excise the entire system of the embedded corrupting practices if not abolish it altogether and start anew, we urge all concerned to monitor developments and get those tasked to do the work with all deliberate speed. But the monitoring and exposing of the corrupt and corrupting practices, especially in this time of pandemic should not end with PhilHealth.
We have been receiving reports that our very own principal international gateway, Ninoy Aquino International Airport, otherwise known as MIAA in international air control operations, has its own share of worms.
For one, has the NAIA management provided assistance to all of its employees, permanent or contractual, all of whom should be considered frontliners themselves by way of incentive pay, protective equipment and other such requirements?
For that matter, have they also coordinated with
the other agencies as well as private concessionaires and users on the kind of assistance which all of them being in the frontlines should be provided with and the protocols they should all work with?
We note that with an annual income of P16 billion, NAIA should be one of the best run and well established COVID-19 complexes in the entire country, with duly protected and assisted personnel, clean, working and disinfected facilities, and most advanced disaster response systems. We expect extra COVID-19 provisions such as isolation/quarantine facilities, an expanded emergency hospital, workers' accommodation and a command and control center money can buy.
Sadly, we are told that the NAIA complex is in dire straits to the point that some users and passengers have been very uncomfortable just passing through. The sordid state of the complex and its inability to respond properly to any emergency was tested at the height of the movement of locally stranded individuals (LSIs) which, as witnessed by no less than the President, was a disaster. It took the Chief Executive himself to order management to do something about the LSIs before things could move.
This is why it comes as no surprise that the very personnel making the complex work have nothing but contempt for the bosses out there. They complain of gate checkers, guards and baggage handlers without full safety complement. The cleaners, even more so. While passengers and airport users are being asked to wear masks and face shields these airport personnel have not been provided with such which for all intents and purposes management should. To think that NAIA has all the money in the world to provide for such needs. In fact, they should ensure that all such workers should be tested and quarantined if needed as they require passengers to.
So, some sectors are asking: What's NAIA doing with its funds? We are told that at the start of the lockdown they allocated more than a billion pesos as a response fund. What happened to this allotted money? Did they use it for testing? social amelioration and incentive pay? provision of basic personnel equipment? clean up of facilities? What about the opex and capex funds which, we are told, amounted to billions of pesos as well?
These and other concerns are meant to ensure that our prime international gateway is capable of handling our air transport requirements no matter how limited at this time of COVID with the confidence the public deserves.
