GMA urged to scrap EO affecting Clark airport

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — With calls remaining unheeded for Malacanang to scrap an executive order that would allegedly adversely affect progress at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) here, local leaders have broken their silence to issue a resolution of the same vein addressed to President Arroyo.

Reminding the President of her promise to fully develop the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) here, community leaders from towns in Tarlac and Pampanga around the Clark special economic zone urged her to scrap Executive Order No. 500-A which, their resolution stressed, "would stunt rather than push the development of the DMIA".

Mayors and representatives of congressmen composing the Metro Clark Advisory Council (MCAC) issued Resolution No. 134, saying that doing so would "allow for the "development of a seamless infrastructure in the Metro Luzon Beltway."

Earlier, multi sectoral leaders issued through the media similar appeals to Malacanang which, however, has not reacted.

MCAC members said they "concur" with the findings of "analysts" that EO 500-A, issued last August to amend EO 500 issued earlier last January, would indeed stunt all the progress so far accomplished at the airport named after the President’s father, former President Diosdado Macapagal.

The resolution noted that when the original EO 500 was issued last Jan. 27, the order "immediately drew praises and support from many sectors as it provided the enabling executive fiat for the full development of the DMIA. The original order provided for the "expansion of air services to the DMIA" by liberalizing airport policies.

MCAC also cited figures saying that the original EO triggered a "dramatic increase" in passenger traffic at the DMIA, or from some 225,000 passengers in the entire 2005 to 500,000 passengers during the first six months of 2006. This meant an increase of 122 percent.

The amending EO 500-A clipped the privileges of international foreign airlines at the DMIA by requiring that they be first designated carriers by their home countries. Foreign airlines now operating at the DMIA and which have contributed to the increase in passenger traffic at the airport are non-designated carriers.

Among the airlines to be adversely affected by EO 500-A is Tiger Airways which was initially expected to generate almost 10 million passengers over a five-year period and expand its network of services to cover routes between Clark and Thailand, Macau, China,Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia and, possibly, Vietnam and Australia.

EO 500-A would also block plans of Singapore-based Tiger Airways to establish a $300-million hub to serve as base for at least six new Airbus 320’s here by January next year.

Plans of other foreign airlines offering low-cost flights here would also have to be abandoned.

"President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has repeatedly underscored her serious intentions of fully developing DMIA as a mega logistics hub that she envisions to establish within the Subic-Clark corridor and has created the Subic-Clark Alliance Development Council (SCAD) to lead efforts towards the fulfillment of such vision," the resolution said.

It also cited the President’s last State-of-the Nation Address wherein she "unvelied the Super Regions concept and created the Luzon Urban Beltway among the four other super regions, and identified the development of the DMIA as a priority project of the beltway."