Then President Benigno Aquino III approved the Tacloban Airport Development Project in (would you believe) 2012. That is 14 years ago, and obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done to complete it. How many more years do we have to wait?
In 2012, 2.12 billion pesos were allocated to this project, which was scheduled to be completed in 2016, or 10 years ago. The allocation was not translated into an actual project implementation.
Simply put, the national government did not implement a project that had already been approved by the President.
That was a significant letdown to the hopes of the people of this region. And it happened in the administration of President Aquino.
We cannot help but reason that political factors were the cause of this failure to launch. We were just on the opposite side of the political divide. Tough luck.
It took the national government the better part of eight years, imagine that, eight years, to revive the shelved project.
Construction of the New Terminal Building began on December 5, 2020, with funding of 762 million pesos, then 1.05 billion pesos, and 1.5 billion pesos. Plus half a billion pesos allocated for support facilities.
The national government allocated 455.9 million pesos in a package that included landslide and airside improvements, access roads, shore protection, and the development of the runway extension site. That brings us to 4.6 billion pesos for the above-mentioned items.
But that is not all. Prior to the construction of the new terminal building, the national government allocated millions of pesos to prepare the site, including pile driving and the construction of concrete and large parking areas for the new terminal building. This cost about a billion pesos.
All in all, it is expected that nearly 10 billion pesos will be spent on the project's construction, including all planned civil works. Quite a sum, and yet the new terminal still has much work to be completed.
As reported years ago by the contractor for phase I of the terminal building, many bills remain unpaid. The same could be happening here. It is not a design and implementation problem causing further delays; it is the national government's inability to pay contractors on time that is causing the backlog and delaying the project's completion.
The problem could even be worse. It is possible that the non-payment at this time is due to insufficient funds to pay the bills.
If this were true, as it was a few years ago, then there indeed is a problem. To minimize the problem, as was done in Phase I, the contractor will submit additional change and variation orders to recover lost time and reduce the liquidated damages deducted from their billing.
The project is facing disaster here, even before the first flight uses the new terminal building.
The delay is familiar, and we have become accustomed to it; what would a year or two more mean?
My view, based on calculations of increased passenger traffic and the amount of money tourists spend each day, is that for every year of delay, the region loses five billion pesos in foregone tourist-related income and several thousand employment opportunities. Not a mean sum and number.
So let us get this done, folks.
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