THE Global Port is the new port service operator of the Tacloban Port. It’s now the partner of Philippine Ports Authority PPA Tacloban in the maintenance, operations, and service of the Tacloban pier. However, it’s a takeover of the port management from LIPSI that comes with a tremendous surprise: new tariff rates unconscionably and so outrageously high.
The increase, ranging up to 360% on cargoes and 401% on foreign cargoes, without doubt, was too much. That is why the display of outrage of the directly affected businessmen is understandable. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually decide to boycott the port, and divert their goods to other business-friendly wharves. And if it will save them a penny or two by diverting their shipments to friendlier ports in Leyte, why not? It will probably be the case if PPA and its partner Global Port remain deaf to the clamor of its patrons.
Beholden to no one maybe the Global Port thought they are, in their identity being a private firm, that is why its management did not even bother to give due courtesies to me when I visited them last Friday to somehow get their side on the matter. Not even in welcoming me to their warehouse office. Had it not for the accommodating presence of Mr. Danilo Singzon who saw me waiting outside the office of the manager (a certain Kenneth?), and somehow afforded me minutes of his time, I would have dwelt credulously in my speculations that there is in the offing of a likely fraudulent money-making scheme being cooked by these two agencies who might be partners in crime, so to speak.
If the PPA management couldn’t give a squint of its time to the media, then I would not wonder why it seemed not bothered at all at the expressed outrage of the Tacloban business community. Maybe there is truth to the claims of the sorely affected local business sector that PPA and Global Port are, or could be, engaged in some monkey business when they imposed an unannounced and exorbitantly high tariff increase. There may be something profoundly serious behind this than what probing eyes now clearly see. Someone has fearlessly claimed via online that some people might make huge money out of this and have found Tacloban Port their perfect “milking cow.”
So yes, they could be partners in what? Your guess is as good as mine!