Prioties

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Monday, September 21, 1998

Opinion

Letter from Mindanao

By Carolyn O. Arguillas

THEIR bylines or taglines have never appeared in any of the newspapers or TV and radio networks, but they have helped us bring the news to you.

Which was why I felt a sense of dread checking in at the Philippine Airlines counter at the Davao International Airport two mornings ago and seeing my friends behind the counter about to lose their jobs with PAL's closure by midnight Wednesday.

The supervisors and managers now were clerks in the cargo division when I was correspondent for the then weekly Veritas newsmagazine in those days when the fax machine or the modem was unheard of and feature stories and accompanying photographs had to be sent via PAL Express.

The provincial journalists' best friend in those days was the clerk at the PAL cargo. By the time I joined a daily newspaper (11 years ago, scanning photos and sending them by e-mail were still unheard of), the cargo clerk was the key to ensuring urgent news photographs would reach Manila today to see print tomorrow.

Tomorrow, you thank PAL not only for carrying the photographs to the newsroom in Manila but also for helping deliver the newspapers to the rest of the country.

PAL's extensive service also made it possible for journalists to rush to other parts of the country to report disasters and other news events.

Other airline companies have since flown the Philippine skies but the service routes are limited.

At the entrance of the pre-departure area in the Davao airport, security personnel manning those X-ray machines will have less work by Thursday, PAL having the most number of flights and passengers on any given day.

Fears have been expressed over the effect of PAL's closure on the entire economy, on the banking system, etc.

For us in the probinsya, and we comprise the majority, PAL's closure also means that starting Thursday:

• Fewer newspapers will be delivered to the rest of the country because the other airlines combined will not be able to accommodate the very heavy cargo load. Add to this the fact that the service routes of the other airlines are not as extensive as PAL's.
• The daily cargo load of tuna, cutflowers and fruits from Davao and General Santos; crabs and curacha from Zamboanga, etc. to Manila or even Japan will be drastically reduced.
• Courier services offering one day delivery of letters, documents and other cargo out of Mindanao and into Mindanao are likely to end up with two-day or three-day delivery services.
• Domestic tourism will suffer and national conventions will again be held in Manila.
• We will have, if we are in a hurry, to fly to Manila to fly to the Visayas or other parts in Mindanao as Emily Marohombsar, President of the Mindanao State University (MSU) did last week.
• Marohombsar, who is based in Marawi City, traveled by land to Cagayan de Oro (about two hours away), flew to Manila and from there flew to Davao to attend the 8th Roundtable Conference of Kusog Mindanaw over the weekend.
• If you can't take the plane or the bus to get to your destination, you can take the boat, sure, but pray it won't go the way of Princess of the Orient.

I boarded, for the last time (?), a PAL flight yesterday morning from Manila to Davao and looked at the PAL employees who will join the unemployed by Thursday.

So much has been said and written about the union-management dispute. But this is not just Lucio Tan's or the employees' loss. It is also the nation's.