Air Transport Office woes
when we brought in Harris of Florida USA, that my uncle-in-law laughed at for being 147 in Jane’s Defence list, and the Fortune Top 500, ATO was ready for change.
apparently, fv ramos then president, was not. we formed an executive order for him to privatize at least the air traffic control part of ATO. but he never got himself to doing so, instead he threw the whole paperwork i slaved on for more than 6 months to congress.
nothing came of it. on the side, at the time, i made another pass at my pet project – the safety / devt council of the philippines. lo and behold! ramos threw it again at congress, and it was made unto a law! it became the legislated national transportation safety board (ntsb) law. although not my original name for it, and unoriginal in the sense that its name is derived from the u.s. ntsb, the passing of the law was enough to sustain me gloating over my genius, for a lifetime. hehehe.
the clincher is: dbm, at the time of ramos said, it was returning the law to congress because there were no funds.
that’s the old bullshit. but when erap came to power, sec. rivera challenged me to head ntsb and was visibly very, very angry when i turned him down, politely telling him that my politics and erap’s politics might not mix well together. sec. enteng rivera said, politics has nothing to do with it since ntsb is an apolitical item, or so-so. i did not believe that would be the case so i stayed pat on my decision not to accept even if it would make me a sec. or under secretary in the erap government.
in those days when we were trying to privatize a section of ATO, that was about 12-13 years ago, there were a lot of items about ATO that needed reform. a lot of do-gooders did make some changes over the years, but there is so much to change in the country’s aviation industry that it would not take just 12, 13 or 20 years to mend the serious irregularities and errors. a lot of mistakes that are bound to happen.
consider this as the same situation prevailing in the maritime and land transport industry. the primordial concern of safety still has to be addressed. when sec. mendoza received a now deceased friend’s good word about my project and my desire to serve the arroyo administration, mendoza did not ask about the ntsb and how it was made into law. neither did he care to know if i had or had not refused the same offer by the erap administration. what sec. mendoza said to my friend was: atin ba siya?
i wonder what kind of question is that. we both helped run the campaign of de villa in 1998, among all the other times when we worked together in other areas. certainly, he has his own peer group, his own golf mates, etcetera etcetera but the question is way too far off the mark. and hurt a lot.
from the point of view of security, safety, air worthiness and other factors, ATO will have to accept that it deserved a low FAA rating and will continue doing so. however, and i hope sec. mendoza is reading this one way or the other, there are a lot of ways to skin a cat. you can’t get government to fund the ATO changes, at least you can let the ntsb roll and it might be able to take care of the problems of ATO half of the way. then, you, mr. secretary can meet ntsb half way and undertake the rest of the reforms but this time on a lesser budgetary requirement. because by then, fifty percent of the load had been shouldered by ntsb.
fortunately for me, sec. mendoza did not notice the first time so i am not involved in the ATO mess. and the chief of that agency was sacked ingratiously. yet, on hindsight these things would never really have happened if sec. mendoza was keen enough to realize that there is a way to solve the ATO problem, only that he needs to do it from another angle — or from the side, or from behind.
next time, he ought to stop asking the question: atin ba ito? atin ba siya? and instead, start investigating if a project and those behind it can help ease his concerns as transport and communications czar.
