ANGELES CITY – “Empty containers equalling empty heads.” Thus, declared the advocacy group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement of the depot at the Clark Freeport dedicated to empty container vans purportedly to decongest the Port of Manila and other ports in the Luzon area.
Late last month, the Clark Development Corp. leased a three-hectare near the Clark airport to CargoHaus Inc. as a “storage house of empty containers shipped from Subic to Metro Manila, Southern, Central and Northern Luzon and vice versa.”
“The first container yard ever in an ecozone… the first time in the history of CDC that we will be addressing issues on clogged ports and traffic congestion apart from settling the concerns of our locators,” said CDC President- CEO Arthur Tugade during the signing of the lease agreement.
For his part, Cargo- Haus Chairman Alberto Lina said depot could ease traffic in Metro Manila by 10 percent as well as double the savings of importers from Clark to Manila, Bulacan and other Luzon areas, as they do not have to pay much for gas, parking and cargo fees.
Bankruptcy
“A dumpsite for Metro Manila’s residual wastes, the container vans being already emptied of their contents,” PGKM Chairman Ruperto Cruz called the depot. “The area, a prime one given its proximity to the Clark airport, could have been dedicated to some other more profitable purpose.”
“Thanks to the bankruptcy of ideas at the CDC, it is a glorified dumping ground,” he added. Cruz lamented what he called “the subservience of the Clark authorities to Imperial Manila at the expense of the assets and potentials of the freeport and the people of Central and Northern Luzon who stood to reap the benefits from the latter.”
Cruz said the depot “other than declogging the Manila ports, would have done real good for Clark, if it served as transhipment point for loaded container vans from the capital region and Subic to Central and Northern Luzon and vice versa.”
“And that would have realized the promised potential of synergy between Subic and Clark that has long been heralded as one engine for economic growth of the regions north of Metro Manila,” Cruz said.
Hazardous
Cruz also expressed apprehension over the possible dumping at the Clark depot of container vans holding the garbage and trash of other countries, like those from Canada that were discovered in the Manila port. “How can we even be sure that the container vans coming in are really empty?” asked Cruz. “What if they held, God forbid, hazardous wastes?”
He cited the case of Subic where some container vans brought in for the same purported purpose “to help decongest the Port of Manila” were believed to contain hazardous wastes. This, after the container vans emitted foul odor and leaked, prompting Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority Chairman Roberto Garcia to order their return to the Port of Manila.
Like the CDC, the SBMA had earlier offered Subic to serve as temporary storage for empty containers that have been clogging Manila ports due to the truck ban imposed by the local government unit.
