A Message for President Aquino, Secretary Abaya

Open Letter to His Excellency Benigno Simeon Aquino III, 

President of the Philippines

and Honorable Joseph Emilio Abaya, Secretary

Department of Transportation and Communications

Dear President Aquino and Secretary Abaya:

Between 1989-1990, we began the advocacy for a Philippine safety agency that led to the passage of the Republic Act to create the NTSB - National Transportation Safety Board.

Shown below is the reconstruction of the briefing on the need to operationalize the National Transportation Safety Board. We revised the briefing over and over again. The updating of the voluminous data on accidents over land, to include actuarial and statistical computations of the probabilities of new accidents for extended, extrapolated periods, is not included since it would be too tasking for us and we do not have the resources nor are equipped any longer to undertake the job.

In the past, we were fortunate to be working with a foreign counterpart - the Harris Corporation Florida USA, a conglomerate with over 100 companies under its wings, that allowed us to opportunity to campaign for the privatization of the then Air Transportation Office's ATS (Air Traffic Service) as well as to push for the creation of the Philippines' transport safety agency.

- Original proponents for National Transport Safety Board 1994

This is the revised text of our executive brief:

UNIFYING SAFETY POLICY ADVOCACY

Unifying policy advocacy for safety in the Philippines has gone a long way. In 1989-1990, a concept for an integrated safety office, to be named the Philippine Safety Development Council (PSDC) arose out of the need to resolve the separability and uncoordinated activities of the Department of Transportation and Communication – DOTC’s Land Transportation Office (LTO), Air Transportation Office (ATO); the Department of National Defense – DND’s Naval, Coast Guard and Air Services; this also goes with the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) when it concerns issues about safety, among many other agencies.

Just like the subject of “Youth,” where there are no less than eleven Agencies of the Philippine Government that are concerned with Youth Welfare – all of them undertaking tasks with no relation to each other.

This proposal for a Safety Agency was turned down by DOTC for the reason, as Assistant Secretary Cesar Valbuena would state to the faces of proponents themselves, that the government “did not have any funds.”

Five years later, another very important event took place that would push the effort towards unifying policy advocacy for safety – particularly on air transportation – when the proposed bill for a National Air Safety Board (similar to the U.S. federal aviation safety Board) was drafted and calendared at the Philippine Congress.

Then Rep. Vicente Rivera, who became Secretary of DOTC stated he had sponsored the bill that included land and sea transportation.

Before this time, the Philippine Safety agency proponents had revised their proposal and renamed the proposed agency for creation into the National Transportation Safety Board from its old suggested name Philippine Safety Development Council.

Focus was given to transport safety considering that with the large information input given by the Land Transportation Office (LTO) about road incidents between the period of the 1980s to 1994 together with the data provided by the Philippine National Police (PNP), maritime safety-related incidents during nearly the same period from the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) and the then Air Transportation Office (ATO). Previous to all these data gathering in 1994-1995, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) Office of the Deputy Commanding General for Navigation Safety (CG-10) also gave voluminous data and several briefings on safety in the seas. Capt Johnny De Leon at the time was the head of that office.

According to former Rep. Rivera, during his time at Congress, the legislators who showed interest and aggressiveness in pushing the law were then Congress Representative Manuel A. Roxas III who is the present Secretary, Department of Interior and Local Government and now Senator Franklin D. Drilon, Senate President.

The bill, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), was approved on 3rd Reading by Congress, but the executive department turned it down for the second time since the Department of Budget and Management under Sec. Emilia Boncodin said “there was no money.”

The reason for encouraging policy reform and unifying policy advocacy in this area is that it will effectively strengthen the existing public safety sector. The public safety sector is already an integral part of the bureaucracy. The Figure below shows the elements of the existing public safety sector.

EXISTING FUNDS, PLAINTILLA AND FACILITIES

Because the public safety sector exists, only in a disjointed manner, it is incorrect to say that there are no funds or there is no money.

All the elements of a reasonably established or organized safety office for land, sea and air are present. The offices shown below have their respective budgetary appropriations and their own plaintilla, thus are well-manned up to a certain extent. Unifying these elements will be a mere expression of the political will of the administration – in this case, that of His Excellency President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III with the help of the Congress of the Philippines where the bill is now reposed.

VITAL CONCERNS

The concerns that still remain to be addressed and the corresponding cost for resolving them accordingly however could probably be what had worried the Philippine Government.

An apolitical, professional safety office, should be able to conduct both post accident and even regular or periodic pre-registration inspections and investigations in order to ensure safety of transport and travel whether on land, sea or air. It would certainly call for the strong networking of the above-named agencies or if not they need to be relocated and placed under just one roof.

The existing facilities of the various below-named elements of the public safety sector should also be refurbished or augmented, as it were, so that they can function unhampered. Most of all, the establishment of a full-function safety office, puts that new agency in league with the international public safety sector and therefore should be able to decently reward its rank and file.

All of these concerns can only be addressed accordingly with the existence of funds in addition to what the Philippine Congress is now allocating to all the below-mentioned components of the Philippine public safety sector. 

OPPORTUNITIES

In 1996, before the Congress started on the same path of unifying policy advocacy for safety, the original proponents for the Philippine Safety Development Council or PSDC had resolved the concern of the Philippine Government over the lack of funds.

Tirelessly convincing members of the private sector to help strengthen the safety sector, a minimal requirement of U.S.$10,000,000 was obtained through pledges (Harris Corp. Florida USA and Arrowhead Corporation). In the past, this pledge was obtained concomitant with the successful privatization of the Air Traffic Service - a parallel project to the campaign for the creation of the safety agency.

Side by side with the US$10-M, the Philippine-American privatization proponents offered the Philippine Government access to soft loans from the Asian Development Bank of US$50,000,000.

In 1998, the proponents of the national safety agency, were able to confer with DOTC Secretary Vicente Rivera – who also sponsored the bill to create the National Transportation Safety Board.  Sec. Rivera firmly believed that the safety office should be a genuinely apolitical office.

The offer to help the government was made to the DOTC and the NTSB.

PUBLIC SAFETY SECTOR FUND SOURCING

A good number of avenues for availing once more of the fund that was originally pledged and would have been made available since 1995-1996, still exists. There are dynamics involved that will favor the Philippine Government, but will require the participation of many agencies, chief among them the former Flagship Programs office now known as the Public-Private Sector Partnership (PPP) Program Office.

On the other hand, the proposed transport safety Board, NTSB, will be a revenue earning agency since some of the elements of the public safety sector are already revenue earners themselves. As the law provides, there are a matter of adjustments of these revenues in conformance with international standards of users' fees and charges.

There shall also be additional revenue sources as much as there will be newer and more challenging functions – mostly relating to regulation, monitoring, investigation and safety sector development.

Thus were it possible to project that the DOTC could revive the USD10-M funding for the safety office as envisioned in 1996, today it is still immensely possible that the department, through the safety office and the CAAP, would be able to revive the USD50-M fund originally made available through a facility at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). 

The new office, moreover, can also levy fines and other charges for owners of means of transport or conveyance. In addition, the safety office will be open to the receipt of grants-in-aid and other forms of soft loan assistance from other friendly sources.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

There is therefore a very pressing need to establish the public sector safety agency as soon as possible.

An added advantage in this case is the currency available for supporting this local project is foreign. It is perceived that the U.S. dollar is weakening against the Philippine Peso.

Furthermore, the reasons for categorizing the Philippines under the CAT II status in international civil aviation[1] was definitely the result of the work of our own foreign counterparts while working in the past with the ATO on privatization, and who had clout with not only the Federal Aviation Administration of the US but also with the International Civil Aeronautics Organization (ICAO) coordinating office in 1994-1995.

Had it not been for the hard work of our foreign counterparts, the CAT rating of our civil aviation would never have improved. We were fully aware of how backward and inadequate the safety measures and security systems of our national transport as a whole. The state of our aviation and shipping, and needless to mention, our land transport needs to be overhauled.

The most pressing the problem is this derelict state of safety in the country that allowed the number of accidents over land, in the maritime and civil aviation sector at the time (maritime and aviation accident figures not included here) can only be resolved by unified public policy for safety.

In closing, the most logical action of the government therefore at this time is to establish the transport safety Board as well as to avail of the fund offered by the private sector without delay.

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[1] CAT II status for the Philippines is the category wherein safety elements were observed to be lacking in a prime airport – in this case Ninoy Aquino International Airport, NAIA.  The Philippine Government invited a team of consultants to work with the Air Transportation Office to correct this problem.