House probe on Int'l airport resumes
Probers set eyes on 'loose ends'

By Florence F. Hibionada

The House committee on good government will be resuming its probe today on controversies hounding the construction of the New Iloilo Airport Development Project in the Sta. Barbara-Cabatuan area.

Committee members will be focusing on the 'loose ends' that cropped up in the last three public hearings.

As such, committee chair, Iloilo 3 rd district. Representative Arthur Defensor is expected to meet anew with top Capitol officials, project implementors, project affected persons and new and old faces as resource persons.

Today's investigation is back in the halls of Congress even as talks then abound of a second round here in the city.

“We do not know yet if this will be the last one. Clearly, there are so many things to be clarified and validated based on what the previous hearings gathered,” Committee member, Iloilo 5th dist. Rep. Rolex Suplico told The News Today.

Among those invited again and confirmed to appear is Iloilo 3 rd dist. Board Member Emmanuel Gallar, principal figure in the P6.8 billion airport expose. Gallar will be accompanied by his counsel, lawyer Norberto Posecion.

In earlier media interviews, Defensor said it will take some two months to come up with the corresponding findings and recommendation once the Committee folds up its investigation. Foremost of the issues set to be resolved are the alleged anomalies and irregularities on the airport project's implementation such as land purchase for both the airport site and relocation site. Questions also abound on the granting of quarry permits alongside the undelivered benefits and promises to project affected people.

The matter has since been hanging for seven years now pushed by landowners, tenants, farm workers and residents affected by the Project. Issues ranged from displacement, physical, economic and political, with the group Airport Concern Alliance (ACA) in the forefront.

“Just when things have just started to run its proper course during the incumbency of then Governor and now Iloilo 3 rd District Representative Arthur Defensor, something of expected intervention came up and to use term of the affected residents, “nagsabotahe sa kabilugan nga dalagan,” SANLAKAS Iloilo Secretary General Raymund Moderes said in a statement.

The “first blow,” the statement continued, came on the site acquisition followed by the relocation site purchase and the third, on the implementation of the Community Assistance Program (CAP).

“What about the CAP? Its contents were not presented to the project affected people (PAP). Not that they knew of or responsible ACA representatives who are to be privy to the CAP knew of. Not until this House inquiry that the PAP representatives through ACA were given a copy of the CAP through the Office of the Partido ng Manggawa Representative Renato Magtubo,” the statement went. “But for the project affected people, the CAP until now remains to be a piece of paper that is yet to address their demands to a decent shift of livelihood after being displaced as farmers in the lands that fed them for years uncounted to give way for the New Iloilo Airport Project.”

In these, Moderes wrote, “government officials responsible for the implementation of such project of scale should be models of utmost transparency in all the dealings and processes being undertaken for the project. Again, this is people's money that should not be held to public scrutiny.”