Group questions CAAP's $10.6-million deposit in ICAO fund

MANILA, Philippines - A group is asking why the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) is reportedly set to deposit $10.6 million into the country’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) trust fund when the allegedly anomalous disbursement of $12 million from the fund has not been explained.

Cesar Lucero, CAAP Employees Union vice president, called on the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) yesterday to investigate the problem.

“We have already spent $12 million from the ICAO trust fund but the ICAO’s significant safety concerns (SSC) on our civil aviation systems has remained unresolved. Maybe it’s time we question the foreign and local consultants named by the ICAO to advise us on our compliance with ICAO standards why we remain non-compliant despite us spending millions of dollars on their salaries and allowances,” he said.

Lucero said the DOTC should ask the ICAO “why, despite the ‘guidance’ of these consultants, the country still has not addressed the SSC findings they have raised on our civil aviation systems a few years ago.”

He said the government should no longer pay the consultants “if they are failing to deliver on their supposed expertise.”

Lucero urged lawmakers to look into the alleged “huge” monthly salaries of the foreign ICAO consultants, who he said are even provided luxury cars as service vehicles and their own drivers. He said local consultants are reportedly given “honoraria” of about $3,000 a month.

He said that the credentials of the consultants, both the foreign and local, should also be looked into.

The ICAO, the United Nations’ international aviation watchdog, raised significant safety concerns on Philippine civil aviation systems in December 2009 after an inspection conducted under its Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme earlier that year.

The SSC finding for the Philippines was a double whammy for the country’s local civil aviation industry after the US FAA downgrade of the country from a Category I to a Category II rating due to deficiencies in its civil aviation systems in December 2007.

The Commission on Audit, in their 2009 audit of the CAAP, noted the huge disbursements of the CAAP and ICAO from the $12 million trust fund established in 1996. The state auditors noted that the ICAO trust fund had been depleted to a degree that it had a standing balance of only $3 million at the end of 2009.