MANILA, Philippines — Senate Minority Leader Koko Pimentel said Friday that administrative complaints must be recommended over the technical failures that took out the country’s airspace on New Year’s Day.
“There must have been negligence to the point that there is no system in place, a fool-proof system, or even if there was a system in place, it was just on paper and was not followed,” Pimentel said partly in Filipino in a virtual briefing.
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“I’m not saying there is criminal liability. If there is none, we will not insist on it. We will follow the evidence,” he added. “But do not tell me there is no administrative liability. I think there might be.”
The report of the Senate public services panel that conducted an investigation into the airspace outage did not recommend any charges against transport officials over the incident that affected tens of thousands of passengers.
Sen. Grace Poe said Thursday in a statement that focusing solely on exacting accountability “would make this into another political circus that is counterproductive to our air safety efforts.”
“To turn this solely into a witch hunt would further drive away the decreasing number of technical air personnel that chose to stay in the country to serve,” Poe said while assuring that she will not let the leadership of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines get away with a slap on the wrist. — Xave Gregorio