Linggo, Disyembre 22, 2013

Letter to Pres. Aquino and Secretary Abaya

Open Letter to His Excellency Benigno Simeon Aquino III, 
President of the Philippines
and Honorable Joseph Emilio Abaya, Secretary
Department of Transportation and Communications


Dear President Aquino and Secretary Abaya:

Between 1989-1990, we began the advocacy for a Philippine safety agency that led to the passage of the Republic Act to create the NTSB - National Transportation Safety Board.

Shown below is the reconstruction of the briefing on the need to operationalize the National Transportation Safety Board. We revised the briefing over and over again. The updating of the voluminous data on accidents over land, to include actuarial and statistical computations of the probabilities of new accidents for extended, extrapolated periods, is not included since it would be too tasking for us and we do not have the resources nor are equipped any longer to undertake the job.

In the past, we were fortunate to be working with a foreign counterpart - the Harris Corporation Florida USA, a conglomerate with over 100 companies under its wings, that allowed us to opportunity to campaign for the privatization of the then Air Transportation Office's ATS (Air Traffic Service) as well as to push for the creation of the Philippines' transport safety agency.

- Original proponents for National Transport Safety Board 1994
Read more from here

Martes, Disyembre 10, 2013

Reconstruction and Recovery after Yolanda



The World Bank says that timely reconstruction will help lessen the impact of super typhoon Yolanda. Before we digest these words, it is also significant to look back into the past. There was a time in fairly recent past when NBC news anchor Brian Williams sounded like a broken record repeating the words over and over again that: Aviation in the United States of America is dying. This is now true with Philippine air line companies and selected several other businesses in the Philippines right at this very moment.

During the post-Yolanda period, only at least one air line company that very enterprisingly lowered its passenger rates (presumably including for cargo) per seat-mile, notwithstanding that the Philippine government ordered that a number of fees and charges being levied in the aviation sector will be waived, among other behests in order to lessen the burden for victims of the calamity and those that had to fly to ground zero to participate in disaster relief and recovery operations . . . .

Dire is a weak description for the situation that a select number of businesses in the Philippines are in right now. More > >


Letter Invitation to World GeoHazard experts

December 9, 2013


Dear Sir / Madame,


Greetings!

This is to formally invite your attention to our determination to hold the international conference on geohazard mapping and relevant environment issues. Our group decided to launch a campaign in 2009 for sustainable crisis hazards mapping and relevant environmental concerns after returning from Mindanao, Philippines following the end of the effort in ending the highly expensive hotel billeting by Juma’a Abu Sayyap of selected staff members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from Switzerland (Andreas Notter), Italy (Eugenio Vagni) and Philippines (Mary Jane Lacaba). More > >