Aquino not keen on intervening for PALEA

President Benigno Aquino III on Wednesday said although he sympathizes with the protesting employees of the Philippine Airlines, he has no plans of intervening on their behalf as he also recognizes the need of the country’s flag carrier to reformat its operations. “We were confronted with one central issue, the airline is in distress, they need reformatting of their corporation to survive," Aquino told members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines at a forum in Makati City. He said what is more important to him is that there will be an airline that wil service the 10 million Filipinos working abroad, especially in the Middle East. “What is the national interest? And if we define the national interest there are 10 million Filipinos overseas. With what has been happening in the Middle East, one would want the airlines to be capable of going to the Middle East to fetch our citizens," he said. “We could not allow the national flag carrier and the only other airline capable of reaching those destinations to become non-entities and lose that ability to, if there was a need, to repatriate our countrymen," he added. Members of the PAL Employees Association (PALEA) had asked the President to intervene on the matter. Aquino said the interest of the millions of Filipinos working abroad is heavier than the interest of the members of PALEA who were retrenched due to the company’s outsourcing scheme. “We would like to sympathize with those in PALEA, but the interests of 10 million outweigh the 2,000 or so that is affected by PALEA," he said. The President admitted that there is no perfect solution to the problem as “it is part and parcel of the changing realities of the economic situation in the entire world." Aquino said he believes the problem will be solved in two weeks as promised by PAL. “PAL told us that they are ready and it would take two weeks to be able to normalize everything. Two weeks after September 30, that’s when they expect normalization," he said. Aquino expressed hope that the Supreme Court order recalling its decision on the case of Flight Attendants and Stewards Association of the Philippines (FASAP) will not affect the planned normalization of the PAL operations. “We were not apprised that there would be really a recall of the decision with regards to FASAP," he said. “Hopefully we will not encounter more disruptions because of that. We will appeal to the Supreme Court perhaps to hasten the processes." Aquino said the passengers can use the airports in other parts of the country for their convenience. “The other factor there is we have pocket open skies for practically everywhere except for NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) which adds more airlines that can service our needs," he said. — KBK, GMA News