MAR SWORN-IN AS DOTC CHIEF; 1st ASSIGNMENT: SETTLE GMA'S RO-RO FERRY DEAL
[PHOTO - Welcome aboard. President Aquino congratulates newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas. The President's first order: Look into the controversy on the Ro-Ro deal.]
MANILA, JULY 5, 2011 (MALAYA) BY REGINA BENGCO - FORMER Sen. Manuel "Mar" Roxas formally assumed the transportation and communications portfolio yesterday.
After the oath-taking, President Aquino gave his first assignment to Roxas: Settle the controversy involving the "roll-on roll-off" (Ro-Ro) ferry project of former President Arroyo.
Aquino said officials of the transportation department were the ones who asked him to question the Ro-Ro port project with French company Eiffel-Matiere SAS.
"When I questioned it, one of the undersecretaries was wondering why I'm questioning it," he said. "I think that will be the first order of business: to really organize the DOTC and have them produce one voice…," the President said. The Ro-Ro project was one of three foreign-funded projects ordered canceled by Aquino.
The other two were the P18.7-billion Laguna Lake dredging project by Belgian firm Baggerwerken Decloedt en Zoon and the NorthRail project by Chinese firm China National Machineries and Equipment Group.
Aquino said he also wants Roxas to oversee the alignments of the Light Rail Transit with Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects, especially the lines going to Antipolo City, San Jose del Monte in Bulacan, and Cavite.
He said he wants an update on the status of the railway system to the Bicol region, which is expected to be in full operation by November. He said he wants to conduct a "surprise run" of Bicol Express in order to see the quality of service.
Roxas said his oath-taking day was "hard to fathom and hard to reflect on."
He said he earlier visited the tombs of his grandfather (President Manuel Roxas), father (Sen. Gerardo Roxas Sr.), and younger brother (Capiz Rep. Gerardo Roxas Jr.) "to renew the call for untainted public service."
Roxas said instead of giving Aquino a headache, he would be the presidential "paracetamol" (analgesic).
He said he would attend to the problematic contracts, but foreign investors need not be nervous as long as their transactions are not anomalous and they passed through the process.
He said he wants a cohesive transport sector where seaports are connected to railways in order to lower the cost of transporting goods and doing business.
He said he will also start "greenfield projects," which are new projects that are built from scratch like factories, power plants, and airports.
Roxas said government will negotiate with Takenaka Corp., the firm that built the NAIA Terminal 3, to correct the structural defects in the airport. "We will have to fix the contract with Takenaka," he said.
He said he will meet this week the people from all agencies under the DOTC to determine their problems, budgetary limitations, and projects in the pipeline.
Roxas vowed to implement development on the transport and logistics network to make an impact on the country's economic growth.
"The deficient transport infrastructure, attributed to two decades of underinvestment and weak sector governance, is a major factor for the country's relatively poor performance over the last two decades," he said.
Without adequate connective infrastructure, the domestic supply chain for food, goods and services is crippled, he said as he outlined some of the key concerns of the department.
His first priority is to resolve the legal and/or contractual issues relating to the controversial contracts and projects, of NAIA 3, NorthRail, MRT3, GMA Ro-Ro Ports, and Stradcom with total cost of $1.46 billion.
Second, is the efficient delivery of public facilities such as the MRT/LRT, international and domestic airports, and the Ro-Ro, and seaports.
"It also includes making sure that the MARINA, Coast Guard, LTO, LTFRB, TRB and the CAAP properly enforce the safety and economic regulations they are each in charge of," he said.
Third and in the longer term is moving forward on rationalizing and optimizing the national transport network. This would entail addressing deep-seated issues such as the quality and productivity of Philippine ports; the rationale and quality of airport infrastructure investments; inadequate transport logistics, saying the Philippines' Logistic Performance Index was much lower in rank than Vietnam's and Indonesia's.
Also, the very small role that the rail sector plays in the inter- and intra- urban transport of freight and passengers and the improvement of road quality which has lagged behind targets due to a combination of under-funding, misallocation of limited funds, and poor project implementation. Based on the 2008 National Transport Study, only 21 percent of the road network is paved.
Lastly, to tie all components together, Roxas looks at rationalizing and optimizing the transport and logistics network to identify bottlenecks, cut losses on questionable projects, and to be innovative in identifying opportunities for public-private partnerships.
Roxas clarified that the communication sector and agencies are not under his purview. It will be noted that the National Telecommunications Commission, TELOF and the CICT were among those transferred under the supervision of the Office of the President during the time of former President Arroyo.
There are 19 agencies and corporations administratively attached or supervised by DOTC and each one is involved in the movement of goods and people.
Public transport groups called on Roxas to reject the plan of Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief Virginia Torres to revert to manual operations particularly the processing of drivers license and motor vehicle registration.
"Without a computerized and interconnected system, the records can easily be tampered, manipulated or even erased totally," they added. – With Genivi Factao and Ashzel Hachero
----------------------------------------------------------
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
----------------------------------------------------------
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE [PHNO] WEBSITE
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/phnotweet
This is the PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE (PHNO) Mailing List.
To stop receiving our news items, please send a blank e-mail addressed to: phno-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Please visit our homepage at: http://www.newsflash.org/
(c) Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------
