Rightsizing right now

AThus, the separation of the regulatory and operational functions should not create another government body.

s a former president and chief operating officer (COO) in at least two major airline companies, we could only imagine the horror of Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime Bautista dealing with the New Year’s Day glitch that closed down our country’s air traffic. Prior to DOTr, Bautista served as the president and COO of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) – dubbed as the country’s flag carrier – since 2004 until he retired in 2019. It takes a lot of fortitude to hold such high pressure job.

His long years of running an airline business kept Bautista cool and calm but steady on a crisis situation. This has toughened him perhaps when the air traffic facility run by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) conked out last Jan. 1. As the DOTr Secretary, the CAAP is one of the 20 attached agencies under him.

The year 2023 started bad for the DOTr Secretary. Another DOTr attached agency – the Office for Transportation Security (OTS) – figured in three embarrassing incidents one after the other. From inappropriate body search done by a female OTS, to an extortion case, and just recently, a thievery offense.

It always comes in threes as one saying goes. Last Jan. 29, a Cessna plane with six people on board went missing. It was only last week the wreckage was finally found in the mountains of Isabela province. Then another Cessna plane with four people aboard crashed in Bicol and was only recovered at Mt. Mayon also just last week. As of this writing, a private medivac helicopter believed to have also crashed somewhere in Palawan has yet to be found.

The CAAP and some other DOTr agencies have their own respective charters, Bautista cited. But he disclosed the DOTr has already recommended the separation of the regulatory and operational functions of CAAP. Aside from the CAAP, Bautista revealed, the DOTr has also undertook the same course of direction for the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) and the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA).

Bautista announced these reform measures being done by the DOTr during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday. In fact, Bautista disclosed, the DOTr is finalizing a draft bill they will submit soon to the 19th Congress to amend the CAAP charter.

“We support that, because the CAAP and MIAA they are both operators and regulators. So, we really want to split these functions up,” Bautista concurred.

The Senate committee on public services chaired by Sen. Grace Poe released to the media last Tuesday its findings and recommendations on the equipment glitch that paralyzed the CAAP air traffic facilities. The flights of an estimated 60,000 travellers, many of whom were New Year vacationers and revelers who included thousands of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and foreign travellers, were disrupted by a ten-hour long CAAP shutdown. Not only 300 flights either suspended or cancelled, there were also flights already up in the air that were turned back to countries of origin to prevent air mishap in the Philippines.

Incidentally, the flight of Malaysian plane MH370 with 239 souls on board remains missing after it lost contact with air traffic controllers on March 8, 2014. It was believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean nine years ago and a documentary feature on this is currently aired in Netflix.

Hence, lawmakers from both the Senate and the House of Representatives initiated their respective “inquiry in aid of legislation” over the ensuing fiasco at the country’s premier airports in Manila, Clark, Cebu, and Davao City where stranded passengers suffered the brunt of the incompetently managed State-run facilities.

Learning from this experience, the Senate public services committee recommended to the government to put up an air traffic management system of the NAIA in a more secure location, ensure compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards, and immediately establish the proposed Philippine Transportation Safety Board (PTSB) to ensure the safety of air passengers.

“The Jan. 1 ‘systems failure’ was indeed a confluence of factors and errors,” Poe declared at the Senate floor after submitting her Committee Report on its CAAP probe.

The Senate probe zeroed in on NAIA’s Communication, Navigation and Surveillance Systems/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) system operated by the CAAP. There was no recorded weather disturbance but the CNS/ATM of the CAAP inexplicably got shut down that day. From investigations, the cause was traced to a circuit breaker that shorted after the system’s uninterruptible power supply as back-up failed to work due to unresolved maintenance issues.

Bautista recalled the issues over the renewal of the CNS/ATM maintenance contract were being resolved and negotiated when it was overtaken by this messed up shutdown. Thus, Bautista explained, the repair and remedial measures were immediately done following the incident. And more necessary changes, Bautista vowed, will be instituted to prevent a repeat of any systems failure.

But the same DOTr attached agencies, Bautista pointed out, are also under the Governance Commission for Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG). Created by law in 2011, the GCG acts as the oversight body monitoring their financial viability and fiscal discipline. In their own recommendations, the DOTr will only have oversight functions over the operations of the same agencies. “[We will have] more oversight and see to it that they do and attend to their responsibilities as provided for in their charters,” he stressed.

Thus, the separation of the regulatory and operational functions should not create another government body.

It would do well for the 19th Congress to do this while no less than President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) always talks about “rightsizing”of the government. There have been much-talked about bills on the “rightsizing” of the bureaucracy that were refiled at the 18th Congress. But the re-filed bills never got out of the legislative mills.

Talk is cheap. “Rightsizing” must be done right now, not later.