Landport

The Paranaque Integrated Terminal Exchange (PITX) is a splendid facility. It resembles a modern airport and has, since it was opened, been called a “landport” by some who use it regularly.

The facility was designed and constructed by Megawide on a 35-year BOT arrangement with government. Megawide is the same company responsible for building the new Cebu-Mactan airport.

International consultants brought into this project studied comparable intermodal stations in cities like Melbourne, London, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. They designed the PITX to be comparable, if not better, than those found in these cities.

Beyond the aesthetics of this facility, however, is a critical function. PITX is supposed to be the terminal point for public transport coming in through the Coastal Highway and Cavitex. From here, 200,000 passengers daily will transfer to city transport to continue their voyage. This will help clear congested city roads, such as EDSA, of thousands of provincial buses.

To achieve this goal of efficiently shifting passengers from provincial to city transport, movement through the PITX need to be carefully orchestrated. This is not an easy task, obviously.

In its first weeks, the PITX was deluged with problems associated with inadequate city transport to receive provincial passengers downloaded in the facility. Those problems are being sorted out.

What truly needs sorting out, however, is an LTFRB order that allowed about 300 buses to enter city roads after unloading their passengers at the PITX. This exemption was given out to the biggest transport companies serving routes in Cavite and Batangas.

The exemption of several large companies drew loud protests, understandably. Smaller bus operators complained they were being discriminated against. Commuters complained about being forced to be unloaded at the PITX with scarce city transport available while the favored buses proceeded to Manila and Edsa with empty buses.

So loud were the protests and so compelling the confusion that the Senate public services committee chaired by Sen. Grace Poe found it necessary to hurriedly convene a public hearing on the matter. Unless the confusion and chaos around the PITX cleared, Poe threatened to continue public hearings into the Christmas break.

After the first hearing, Poe pinned the blame on the DOTr and the LTFRB. Just before the terminal was inaugurated, an administrative order was issued exempting the large bus companies from unloading at PITX and turning back. That order contradicts the very purpose for investing in this terminal: to prevent provincial buses from further clogging up the streets of the metropolis.

Poe likewise blamed the government agencies for failing to ensure adequate transit units that will bring the commuters into various points in the city. Spending on this facility will be pointless if our bureaucrats constantly forget what it is for.

Jingoism

Another Senate hearing was called to inquire into why there seemed to be a proliferation of workers from Mainland China in the country.

Protests over such proliferation verged on jingoism. Some politicians were publicly suggesting a Chinese invasion was underway. Others were arguing that foreign workers were stealing Filipino jobs.

Interestingly, the hearing brought out the fact that there are actually two government agencies involved in allowing foreigners to take up jobs in the country. The first agency is obviously the Bureau of Immigration  (BI) that issues special employment visas. The other agency is the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) that also issues alien employment permits.

Most of the permits, it turns out, were issued to foreigners working for online gaming companies supervised by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. These online gaming operations understandably need agents fluent in Mandarin since they cater largely to the Chinese market. Clearly, there are not enough Filipino workers fluent in Mandarin to man all the gaming outfits that were set up here.

DOLE admits to issuing 52,000 employment permits. The BI, for its part, admits to issuing 119,000 special employment visas this year. Those numbers appear to exceed what might be calculated as the manpower needs of the 57 accredited online gaming companies operating here.

The number likewise suggests that there are probably more Chinese nationals working here undocumented. They are to be found in retail outlets and other enterprises not related to online gaming.

There could easily be tens of thousands more Chinese nationals working in the country without proper permits. The estimates available are rough and largely anecdotal.

Granted there is an excess of employment permits granted Chinese nationals and that many more are working without documentation in the country, there is little need to indulge in wild conspiracy theories about Beijing’s grand designs. Bureaucratic corruption is very likely the simpler explanation for the phenomenon.

Recall how, after a major raid on an online gaming operation last year led to the arrest of dozens of Chinese workers doing work without proper documentation. The incident produced an even bigger scandal: two BI deputy commissioners were found to have received millions in exchange for releasing and allowing the deportation of the illegal workers without further legal hassles. Those two are not charged with plunder.

Apparently, the surge in the number of both documented and undocumented workers from China is a source of illicit gain for some of our bureaucrats.

Those who conjure grand conspiracy theories to explain their abundance here are leading us away from the real problem. We simply have a flawed bureaucracy, one where agencies that are not equipped to properly assess the country’s employment needs have wide discretion over the issuance of work permits.

This is the problem that needs addressing.