SBMA, OLONGAPO COORDINATE FOR PROGRESS

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT: Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority ( SBMA) Chairman and Administrator Wilma Eisma on Friday said both her agency and the neighboring community of Olongapo are working together to promote progress and development for their common stakeholders. “We’re on the same page,” Eisma said, stressing that friendship and cooperation had long been the cornerstone of SBMA- Olongapo relations. “I believe that we have a shared mission, that we have to get our acts together despite some friction that crops up in the minutiae of operations, which is but normal between two separate entities that work in close proximity,” she added. Eisma asserted this a day after Olongapo City Mayor Rolen Paulino Jr., in an interview with Press Secretary Martin Andanar over Radyo Pilipinas, described a “symbiotic” relationship existing between SBMA and Olongapo. The mayor’s pronouncement belied charges made recently on social media that the SBMA lacked coordination with city officials on matters such as Covid- 19 control measures and that it was building a “wall” between the two communities. In the said interview, Paulino stressed that the Subic Bay Freeport Zone and Olongapo City have a mutually beneficial relationship and that coordination between the two entities has boosted the local economy. “Actually, the relationship is very symbiotic; it’s mutual. Olongapo supplies manpower [ to] the Subic Bay Freeport, and on the other hand, the Freeport is, of course, a major source of employment for Olongapo residents,” Paulino explained.