President Arroyo is set to inaugurate on her birthday on April 4 the P308 million Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) Terminal 1 Expansion project. President and CEO Victor Jose I Luciano of Clark International Airport Corp. has announced that the terminal which construction is now in full blast. Terminal 1 is a two-storey building that will feature two aero bridges, Flight Information Display, Close Circuit Television, Background Music, Public Address System, X-ray machines, Escalators and Elevators.
Luciano said that the new expanded terminal will have a bigger space for commercial concessionaires including a larger lounge for passengers. It can accommodate additional 500,000 passengers annually. The current capacity of the terminal is 2 million passengers annually. President Arroyo last February inspected the P308 million DMIA Terminal 1 Expansion during her Urban Luzon Beltway tour were she visited all of her infrastructure projects in the Northern Philippines.
At the same time, Luciano also expressed his gratitude to all the stakeholders at Clark Freeport for their support especially in the development of the Diosdado Macapagal International (DMIA) which now hosts to foreign and local carriers flying out of Clark. “I would like to thank all the stakeholders of Clark, to the Clark development Corporation (CDC) and the employees of CIAC for their support,” Luciano said after bagging the 2010 AIM Alumni Achievement Award or the Triple A for his excellent performance that resulted in the development of DMIA. The award was given by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) last February 26 in Makati City.
Business groups have issued a warning against a well-organized syndicate, which has victimized at least three business firms in Pampanga of some P18 million in what is known as “boodle-boodle” operation in the country.
The operation of the syndicate has been disclosed to the regional office at Clark Freeport of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) which already has prepared criminal charges against at least 10 suspected members of the syndicates.
However, some of the victims have reported that the suspected syndicate members have mysteriously disappeared and could not be located by NBI and police authorities as of this writing.
Simply stated as gathered by police NBI investigators the syndicate members duped the Pampanga victims composed of a hotel owner, a Jollibee restaurant operator and a big private school owner.
The hotel owner complaint that the syndicate members approached him some time last October and offered to sell boxes of “oil separators” allegedly manufactured and imported from Indonesia. The oil separators gathered from the sellers they are used in converting big quantity of crude oils into refined gasoline without passing through a refinery. The victims were duped that the separators are effective in producing gasoline the crude oils now reportedly being massed produced in an oil plant in Palawan.
The buyers of the oil separators, however, found out that the subsequent deliveries of the oil separators were nothing but plain flour.
The victims said that the well-dressed syndicate members came in their establishments on board late model cars and many of them wearing “Rolex” watches. The syndicate members recommended to the victims’ establishments the employment of their good-looking-ladies as secretaries.
The big-hotel owner said that the syndicate female member he employed in the hotel establishment manipulated its camera motoring system that did not function during the visits of the syndicate members there.
The victims said they bought boxes of oil separators from the syndicate members at P1 million per boxes.