ANGELES CITY – The Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM) has reiterated its call on Friday to scrap the Sangley Point airport plan in Cavite City and instead develop the Clark International Airport (CIA) and the Fernando Air Base airport in Lipa City.
Ruperto Cruz, PGKM chair, said then that an airport in Sangley Point will shut down the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Manila because of their proximity with each other in terms of air distance.
“The traffic gridlock in Metro Manila will not be eased but will even worsen with an airport at Sangley as passengers from the north will have to still traverse trough the metropolis,” Cruz said.
During a meeting with Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) President-CEO Emigdio “Dino” Tanjuatco III at the residence of Cruz at the Royal Garden Estate here on Friday, Cruz reiterated his call to the former and insisted on the full and immediate development of the CIA.
Tanjuatco admitted that he was taken aback by the press release from the Department of Transportation and Com-munications (DOTC) which saw print in major news dailies quoting Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya as saying that the study made by Aeroports de Paris for the CIA is “too big.”
“Aéroports de Paris designed a huge terminal that is beyond what we thought would be the actual demand. Our struggle, we don’t need it yet,” Abaya said. The report said the French firm refused to modify the design; the government would instead build the project in Pampanga province in several phases.
“We should do it in phases. At first, they don’t want to revise it. We think it is too big a design,” Abaya said. Cruz told Tanjuatco that the DOTC should orget about developing a new airport in Cavite City.
He said the DOTC and Abaya should instead focus on the development of the CIA and the airport in Fernando Air Base in Lipa City, Batangas. Cruz said the CIA and the Lipa airport will complement and decongest NAIA. The DOTC is “anti- progress and anti-tourism,” Cruz said.
It is for these reasons, Cruz told Tanjuatco, that the PGKM is convinced of the existence of a conspiracy to sabotage the development of the Clark airport.
Cruz also said Abaya should resign from his post because of the agency’s “slow paced” development of the Clark airport. Cruz also told Tanjuatco that only a fraction of the P436 billion reported as the cost to build the Sangley Point airport would be needed to build the fast train joining NAIA and CIA.
But Tanjuatco assured Cruz that the DOTC and CIAC are pushing for the development of the Clark airport. Meanwhile, records from the CIAC showed a substantial decline in the number of passengers at the CIA for 2014.
The volume of passengers for 2014 was 877,757 as compared to 2013’s 1.2 million and 2012’s 1.3 million. The decrease was mostly attributed to the suspension of flights by Emirates Airlines, Air Asia Philippines, and Zest Air among others. The CIA currently hosts Dragonair, Asiana Airlines, Cebu Pacific, Seair, Qatar Airways, Tigerair, Jin Air, and Air Asia Berhad.
