Safety issues still hound Tiger

The Philippine Star
HIDDEN AGENDA By Mary Ann Ll. Reyes
July 13, 2011 12:00 AM

There had been newspaper reports that Singaporean budget carrier Tiger Airways will launch direct flights between Singapore and Cebu. The latter will be Tiger’s second destination in the Philippines, after Manila.

Tiger has recently been embroiled in controversy, especially after Philippine carriers led by Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific, and Air Philippines, complained that Tiger’s marketing arrangement with local carrier Seair basically amounts to exercise of cabotage, a right exclusive to wholly Filipino owned carriers.

But this is not the only issue that Tiger needs to explain, at least to the Filipino people.

International media has reported that Tiger Airways has been grounded by Australian authorities until August, as they continue investigations into safety concerns.

Safety investigators are examining why a navigational database used by Tiger contained the wrong information, causing one of its planes to fly below safe altitude levels.

Last month a Tiger Airbus 320 flew below air traffic control’s lowest safe descent altitude of 2,500 while approaching Melbourne airport.

The pilots failed to notice the navigational mistake when they cross-checked the navigation information with their paper version, but the plane managed to land safely after Air Traffic Control corrected the pilots.

A preliminary report into the Melbourne airport incident from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has found the error was due to an incorrect altitude in the plane’s commercial navigational database.

A similar incident also happened with a second plane.

Tiger has been thrown into turmoil in recent days, with its chief executive Crawford Rix recently announcing he would resign. His replacement, Tony Davis, is the group president of Tiger Airways Holdings and the man who was sent from Singapore to lead the talks with CASA.

NCIP bucks P-Noy on mining

The 43-member strong Brooke’s Point Tribal Leaders Federation (BPTLF)    representing some 3,000 indigenous people from Palawan are complaining about the fact that the same government office that is tasked to protect their interest is the same one sabotaging it.

This is because the National Commission for Indigenous People (NCIP) has continued to deny the issuance of a certificate of pre-condition (CPC), a social acceptability document for MacroAsia Corp., whose mining operations in the municipality of Brooke’s Point is seen as the people’s last hope for the future future.

President Aquino, in a recent visit to Palawan, has said that he will support whatever is the position of the communities and that while they stand to economically benefit from mining projects, they are also the ones to suffer if anything goes wrong.

But the NCIP seems to have its own agenda. MacroAsia’s CPC has not been acted upon despite the fact that 883 of the 910 registered indigenous families in Brooke’s Point’s six barangays to be directly affected by the operations have already highly recommended the mining project.

According to BPTLF leaders, NCIP chairperson Zenaida Pawid and commissioner Dionesia Banua are obviously hell-bent on withholding or finally denying the document for MacroAsia.

BPTLF president Renila Dulay and vice president Agustin Bacosa, who also heads the Southern Palawan Tribal Communities, are also complaining about how Pawid has been maltreating them.

Believing that the NCIP would continue to delay the issuance of the CPC, the tribal leaders have written President Aquino asking him to finally order the granting of the certificate to MacroAsia. They have also sought the ouster of Banua and reconsider the chairmanship of Pawid.

Twice, in full force, they came to Manila to literally beg on their knees before the NCIP commissioners meeting en banc. On both occasions, they were given the run-around.

They are also complaining that Banua’s husband who holds a driver’s item at NCIP was made a part of the validating team and was the only member who refused to sign the validation report for obvious reasons – he supports his wife-commissioner’s stand not to allow mining in their province.

The CPC serves as the social acceptance document for the mining project which should been issued 15 days upon submission of the report dated April 28, 2010 on the FPIC undertaken in March 2010. The FPIC report has been gathering dust at the office of Banua.

TARLAC said that based on the initial evaluation of their lawyers on the information they got from the BPTLF and newsreport, the NCIP officials could be charged with violations of the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standard for Government Employees (RA 6713) Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (RA 3019).

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