New RP-Taiwan air agreement expected by month's end

Manila and Taipei may yet forge a new bilateral air agreement by the end of this month as President Estrada directed the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to pursue talks on the issue with their Taiwanese counterparts.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Franklin Ebdalin, a member of the Philippine panel in the negotiations, revealed that representatives of the two countries have agreed to resume their talks and set Jan. 31 as the target date for the completion of the new accord.

Ebdalin said both parties agreed to resume the negotiations after Jeffrey Koo, an emissary of Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, informed Mr. Estrada that their airlines wanted to resume their Manila-Taipei operations.

"We will try to come up with a compromise by Jan. 31 so the Taiwanese carriers can fly (to Manila) again. Taipei will just have to agree on certain conditions," Ebdalin said.

Manila canceled last Oct. 1 its air accord with Taipei, disallowing Taiwanese airliners China Airlines and Eva Airways from servicing the Manila-Taipei route.

Philippine authorities cited the two airlines' alleged violations of certain provisions of the agreement, including the "third freedom rule as ground for the cancellation."

The Taiwanese carriers wanted to resume their flights to Manila, but refused to give in to the CAB's conditions that they scrap their third destination operations.

Ebdalin said while the deadlock hurt the Taiwanese carriers more than the Philippine aviation industry, reviving the air agreement would benefit overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) seeking employment in Taiwan, which has continued to hire Filipino workers despite the aviation feud.

There were fears that severing ties would spell doom for OFWs in Taiwan.

But records of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) show otherwise. From October to December 1999, a total of 12,150 Filipinos were added to the roughly 100,000 OFWs already in Taiwan.

Taipei's Employment and Vocational Training Administration (EVTA) reports that there were 116,709 OFWs as of October 1999 -- 40 percent of the total number of foreign workers in Taiwan.

POEA figures for the three-month period also reveal steady OFW deployment to Taiwan: 3,924 in October; 4,639 in November and 3,660 in December. Significantly, the number went up by 18 percent in November, a month after both the Philippines and Taiwan discontinued direct flights between Manila and Taipei.

On the other hand, data culled by the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) also show a similar trend.

The trend belies reports of retaliatory moves from Taiwan such as the reduction of the Philippine labor quota in favor of the Thais and Vietnamese or the freezing of the issuance of new visas to Filipino workers.

"The numbers just show that Taiwan still considers the Philippines a rich and effective source of labor, particularly skilled workers," a labor analyst said.-- With PNA