The need for a transport safety board

In our last column, we came up with the news about that incident which happened last Thursday, June 12th, when radio blocktimers Rey Cortes and his co-host Lito Solon figured in a shooting incident just outside the Bureau of Customs near Ft. San Pedro, across the Plaza Independencia in Cebu City. Luckily, Cortes survived the shooting. The two radio commentators host a "blocktime" radio commentary program called "Inkwentro" (Encounter) on Bantay Radyo where they attacked an alleged corrupt Customs examiner. Now whether the subject of their seething commentaries masterminded this shooting is something we all would like to find out. Hopefully, the police would find out more about this incident, digging deeper perhaps into the role of the media in corrupting Customs or other government officials, including the police of course!

Blocktimers are people who purchase radio airtime for a fee, who in turn get their friends or enemies to advertise on their program. Hence, the term Attack Collect, Defend Collect (AC-DC). Now the issue of why blocktimers are still allowed by the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters sa Pilipinas (KBP) is now the subject of a heated debate. Hopefully, this problem will be settled soon so that media, especially radio commentaries can regain its lost credibility. While I agree that stopping this could be an infringement on the Freedom of Speech, what is important is for the radio station allowing blocktimers to also be subsidiarily liable with the commentators for any libelous content.

Meanwhile, the news reports reveal that Rey Cortes was able to survive the attack against him, because he was able to run towards his car and pull out his cal .45 pistol and fired back at his attacker. While we should be thankful for that, however another question erupts as to why the two radiomen had high caliber firearms with them? Since when was media authorized to carry their firearms outside their residences, or were they carrying these guns illegally?

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Three weeks ago, when the Super Ferry 12 collided with the M/V San Nicolas off the historic island of Corregidor, this accident once more magnified the problems with our maritime industry. One of them, which probably wasn’t even contributory to the accident is the overloading of vessels. Sure, the M/V San Nicolas may have been overloaded, but that should have been a totally different issue. But until today, nothing is being done about the overloading of many vessels, especially in smaller ports, which litter the Visayan Islands.

Well, other more important breaking news has already graced the headlines of our national dailies and pretty soon, the sinking incident at the mouth of Manila Bay would just fade into oblivion. Well, last week on June 10th, a Sulpicio Lines vessel, the M/V Dipolog Princess ran aground off Cordova in the Mactan channel. While it made the local news, however, since no one died and as reported by the Cebu Coast Guard Commander Feliciano Dy (yes, there was no overloading of the vessel which is authorized to carry 1,155 passengers, but was carrying only 1,200 passengers at that time) there really wasn’t a big howl about the ship running aground.

Reading the Coast Guard reports on this incident, it turned out that the M/V Dipolog Princess was way off it’s pre-plotted course. Further investigation revealed that 3rd mate Ramon Mabanag was on the bridge when the accident happened. To add to their troubles, Ship Captain Macario Paras admitted he was asleep in his cabin as the ship was nearing Cebu. Then, to top it all, it was raining hard that night and their radar was not functioning. Hence, when the 3rd mate was already in doubt as to their course, he awoke the captain, but then it was already too late, the ship had hit bottom! As of this time, I don’t know if the lighthouse near the area was operational.

What we’re trying to say here is that, Sulpicio Lines isn’t a small company like the M/V San Nicolas, but yet it has problems not just with its crew, but also malfunctioning equipment. If you ask me, a vessel of this size shouldn’t be allowed by the Coast Guard to leave port with a defective radar. But then, the problem is we just take things for granted, after all, human life is cheap in this country. Luckily, no one got hurt in this incident. But then, we would like to see a full-blown investigation conducted by the Maritime Board, so at least we can pinpoint why the ship ran aground in the first place.

Oh, yes, before we move to the next discussion or go to another breaking news topic, allow me to revive my old proposal, which we wrote years back at the time when a Cebu Pacific Air DC-9 jetliner crashed into a mountain in Gingoog City. My proposal was for Congress to create the equivalent of America’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). This is the agency that determines who is at fault in a particular accident, whether it is an airline, ship or bus accident.

Todate, whenever there is an air crash, it is the Air Transportation Office (ATO) that does the investigation. But what if the accident can be traced to an incompetent or corrupt ATO official who gave an OK to a plane that shouldn’t be allowed to fly in the first place? Don’t you think that the ATO would have buried this deep in their files and find some other reason for the cause of the crash? Well, I’m glad to tell you that someone shares this idea with me and he’s no less than ATO Chief Gen. Adelberto Yap. But then, are some congressmen listening out there? Nope, they’re all too busy giving out air franchises to people who shouldn’t be in the airline business. While that is for air transport, the same thing is true with the maritime industry. They too need a fully independent accident investigating board like the NTSB. But no one seems to care to listen to our proposal…more so that Congress is in a recess. Meanwhile, it is abhorrent to know that the investigating bodies tasked to look into accidents come from the very agencies that may have a direct or indirect hand with a particular accident. Hence, this practice should be stopped before another accident takes place.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show entitled, "Straight from the Sky" shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8 p.m.