Troublesome tenant

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    SO WHAT’S happening with the twin leisure estates of the Clark Freeport?
    Mimosa appears to be ever in trouble with its privatization from the time the Clark Development Corp. took over its developer-owner, the Castillian, Señor Don Jose Antonio Gonzales who has also since dropped his Malou apostolate.

    At the time of Tony Ng at CDC, a Korean firm won, and then lost, in its Mimosa bid. Of late, the plastics king-owned Waterfront won the Mimosa bidding, and then failed to meet the period of the memorandum of understanding it signed with the CDC.This has constrained the CDC Board to declare the bidding a failure and denied the request of Waterfront for an extension of its MOU.

    Mimosa, indeed, seems to be in trouble. On the other hand, Fontana appears to be simply troublesome.

    The other leisure estate – once the fief of a Mister Biggs – is in the news again, taken to task for allegedly constructing buildings without the necessary permits and repeatedly ignoring, nay, defying work stoppage orders from the CDC. 

    So accused one Rolando San Diego, a contractor, not a “contactor” as erroneously written in a news report in this paper last Monday.

    San Diego cited the non-compliance of Fontana Development Corp. (FDC) with the notices of violation and work stoppages dated May 22, 2008 and September 26, 2008 issued by the CDC’s Building Utilities Regulatory Development to the leisure firm.

    A more serious accusation hurled by San Diego was in the construction of  buildings by FDC.

    “Plans and specifications for construction of the residential housing units designed by FDC are being implemented without indications that these were submitted to and an approved building permit was issued by the BURD…The project inspector also gave instructions to our project engineers not to install some top bars and bent bars on the reinforced concrete floor slab whose number and sizes are indicated in the plans. No civil engineer or contractor will ever issue a certificate that the structure is done in accordance with the plans and specifications knowing that some reinforcing bars were not provided.” So narrated San Diego in a letter of, er, disclosure(?) to CDC President/CEO Benny Ricafort.

    San Diego also revealed “an incident wherein one worker of a sub-contractor was electrocuted and died due to lack of enforcement of a safety program…”
    And the coup d’grace: “The major problem is withholding of the payment due us for the scope of work already accomplished resulting in our workers not receiving their salaries on time.”

    So is San Diego saying all these things to spite Fontana for not paying his company and workers? Perhaps, but still the seriousness of his accusations merit some investigations by the CDC pronto.

    Not too long ago, Fontana got into some trouble too with Mayor Boking Morales in the expansion of its golf course well within the political boundaries of Macapagal Village, a Mabalacat barangay, sans any permit from, nay, not even so much as a courtesy call at the municipio. Boking raised hell over Fontana’s act of belligerence, threatening to take to court the firm, and even CDC – at that time with Levy Laus as president.

    Boking ultimately pacified meant a happy resolution of the issue. There is though a brewing, graver issue on the Fontana golf course anew. Barangay officials of Calumpang accused Fontana of diverting the course of the Sacobia River away from Macapagal Village directly toward their barangay.

    “Once the heavy rains fall, we will be inundated,” said a kagawad. Time for Boking to raise hell anew for the sake of his constituents.    
             

    In retrospect now, Fontana’s “defiance” of CDC orders is not limited to those notices of violations and work stoppages. Fontana has apparently defied the very spirit of Republic Act 7227 or the Bases Conversion Development Law that created the then Clark special economic zone now Freeport.

    RA 7227 specifically envisioned for Clark a (domestic) labor-intensive, export-oriented, foreign-capital invested ecozone. Go to Fontana and count the number of Filipino workers against the number of their Chinese counterparts. So, where’s the Filipino labor-intensiveness there?

    If memory serves right, there was a raid not too long ago of the Fontana premises by the Bureau of Immigration and the National Bureau of Investigation that yielded some 100 undocumented aliens – primarily Chinese who could not even speak a word in English – working there! That was not just a slap on the face of Filipino labor delivered by Fontana. That was a kick in the ass, no, make that a spit on the face of the CDC. Fontana flouting our very laws there.

    CDC’s got to tame this troublesome tenant.    

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