Organizations across Cebu on Tuesday expressed support to the partnership of Megawide Construction Corp. and GMR Infrastructure of India to rehabilitate and transform the decades-old Ninoy Aquino International Airport at a cost of P109 billion.
Different stakeholders from Cebu’s tourism and health sectors, in separate letters addressed to President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, said with Megawide’s NAIA rehabilitation plan, Filipinos would ultimately experience immense improvement in comfort, efficiency and airport security.
This came after Cebu Business Groups—the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. – wrote separately to Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade and House transportation committee chairman Edgar Mary Sarmiento to remind them that the NAIA rehabilitation was part of the President’s “Build, Build, Build” legacy.
Cebu is one of President Duterte’s bailiwicks that showed strong regional support for his administration.
Cebu Association of Tour Guides president Mary Grace Melendres said her group strongly denounced and decried the “harassment” against world-class Mactan-Cebu International Airport operators Megawide and GMR as they faced an anti-dummy case before the National Bureau of Investigation.
Completely opposite from what the case makes of the Megawide-GMR partnership, Melendres said the partnership was an asset to Cebu tourism.
“We believe the sole purpose of this issue is to tarnish their reputation given the NAIA project and has nothing to do with the airport’s management,” Melendres said in a letter addressed to President Duterte on Dec. 28, 2020.
Melendres said the modernization of the MCIA proved pivotal in advancing Cebu’s tourism image as tourist arrivals greatly increased.
He said from only 6.5 million passengers per annum six years ago, the number of passengers doubled to almost 13 MPPA in 2019 when Megawide-GMR took over the MCIA management. .
“The solid partnership of Megawide and GMR has been an asset to Cebu boosting local tourism and the regional economy. MCIA excellent operations has provided jobs and livelihood to Cebuanos and business growth opportunities for local entrepreneurs that include us,” Melendres said.
Local supplier Vertical Difficult Access Solutions Inc. president Eduardo Solana Jr. said in a separate letter to President Duterte on Dec. 21 that the third-party partners of Megawide and GMR were very much satisfied with how the MCIA is operated and managed.
Solana said that as a part of third-party airport suppliers, vendors and concessionaires, he believed that “the case is nothing more than a nuisance issue meant to tarnish the company’s reputation” in connection to the private contractor’s NAIA rehab bid.
Solana said Megawide and GMR’s solid track record of designing, constructing and delivering topnotch airports would definitely deliver a world-class NAIA and would put the country back in the map of international tourists.
Dr. James Peter Aznar, Prime Care Alpha COVID- 19 Testing Laboratory head said NAIA’s modernization was necessary not only to jumpstart the country’s tourism and economy, but to also ensure the country’s safety amid global health threats like the pandemic.
Aznar said airports inadvertently have become the gateway of the pandemic and would remain not only as the primary gateway, but also as the first line of defense of each country on such global occurrences.
“We strongly believe that Megawide and GMR are also the nation’s best bet to revive the glory of the country’s airports most especially the country’s primary gateway, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport,” Aznar said in his letter to President Duterte on Dec. 21.
“NAIA has definitely seen better days. It even sunk so low as being the worst airport in the world from 2011 to 2013. Yet for one reason or another, it never got the care it so richly deserved as the initial touchpoint to most visitors of our beautiful country,” he said.
Aznar said that having a world-class airport like the MCIA is not far from reality. For him, seeing to it that NAIA rehab comes to fruition may be the President’s “most beautiful legacy.”
“We continue to believe in the administration’s promise to get the NAIA rehabilitation on its way while protecting the achievements of other Philippine airports,” Solana said.
