Korean edifice complex in Subic forest slammed
It looks like it is being built for people who want to commune with nature, but some environmentalists are raising a howl.“It’s horrible. It’s horrific,” Gina Lopez, managing director of the ABS-CBN Foundation, which oversees Bantay Kalikasan [Nature Watch], said in a phone interview Friday.
“Foreigners should respect our environmental laws when they come here.”
Lopez was referring to the ongoing construction of two buildings by a Korean investor right inside the lush rainforest of the Subic Bay Freeport in Zambales province, northwest of Manila.
“How can you do that? I’m sure that’s not private property. I feel very bad about it,” Lopez said.
Concerned individuals have called the Inquirer’s attention to the two structures being constructed by the South Korean shipbuilder Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction (HHIC) Ltd.
The company denied reports that the two buildings were commercial hotels, saying these were residential condominiums intended for its staff.
“These are going to serve as quarters for our Korean staff and, in the future for some Filipino employees,” Shim Jong Sup, HHIC-Philippines president, said by phone.
The first building is 10-story-high and the other is 20-story-tall.
“We want to provide accommodations for our staff,” Shim added, ruling out reports that HHIC had ventured into a hotel project.
The units are designed for Korean expatriates working for Hanjin who have families or who are bachelors, he said.
Shim could not immediately say how much the construction of the condominiums would cost, saying only that “we spent a lot of money to make the structure very strong against earthquake.”
Administrator Armand Arreza of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA), which runs the free port zone, estimated the costs of the housing project at $20 million.
‘No environmental violation’
Shim said the construction of the buildings near the lush forests of Subic, a former US naval base, did not violate any environmental regulations.
“We got an ECC [environmental compliance certificate],” he said. It was obtained from the SBMA ecology department.
Amethyia de la Llana-Kovak, SBMA ecology department chief, confirmed the issuance of an ECC last year to the housing project.
Regarding the location, she said the structures were being constructed near the “built-up area” of the Subic forests.
In the protected area management plan of the SBMA, the built-up areas—those allowed for development activities—are marked in pink, De la Llana-Kovak said.
She said the marking indicated that the former tenants, the United States Navy, had previous uses for those areas within the forests.
The HHIC site is near a naval magazine, De la Llana-Kovak said.
She said the project cost was not indicated in the company’s application for an ECC.
The SBMA business development department said the condominiums were a “subsequent” project to Hanjin’s $1.65-billion investment at the free port.
The housing project came more than a year after the HHIC went full-blast in its shipbuilding operation in late 2006, it was learned.
The shipyard, off the Redondo Bay in Subic, Zambales, employs more than 10,000 workers.
Koreans account for about 15 percent of that labor force, the Inquirer learned.
At least seven Filipino workers have died in separate incidents at the shipyard since December 2007 due to what officials said was lack of safety measures at the sites.
Ecological impact
ABS-CBN Foundation’s Lopez expressed concern at the ecological impact of building the condominiums in the Subic rainforest.
“Seventy-five percent of our rainforest has disappeared because nobody knew what was happening. This same thing is happening here,” Lopez said.
“That’s what they wanted to do with La Mesa. Because of high public awareness, this was stopped.”
Bantay Kalikasan, an environmental arm of ABS-CBN Foundation, fiercely fought against the construction of housing projects for executives and former employees of the Manila Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) in the La Mesa watershed in Quezon City.
Lopez said the use of the land and the issuance of environmental compliance certificate by local authorities to the Korean company for the right to build the structures should be the subject of an inquiry.
“Who issued the ECC? Who sold the land? How did that happen?” she said.
By TJ Burgonio, Tonette Orejas - Philippine Daily Inquirer
Labels: condominium towers, environment, hanjin, Subic Bay
posted by OlongapoCity Zambales at
6:12 AM
1 Comments:
Monument to deceit
Philippine Daily Inquirer - Editorial
The startling image of high-rise buildings in the middle of a rain forest could have been a scene from Burma (Myanmar) or North Korea, where secretive cabals of official live and luxuriate with impunity. But while the buildings are indeed owned by Koreans, they are being built in Subic. Are they a case of deceitful foreigners, diminishing a precious resource under the very nose of our government? No. The construction of the buildings has been made possible with the connivance of our officials. Hanjin Heavy Industries, which claims that the buildings are meant to house its workers, says it has an environmental compliance certificate.
It probably does. And even if it doesn’t, the fact is, the buildings are already going up. Environmentalists can raise a howl, but the best they can hope for is for the buildings to be knocked down—which won’t bring the rainforest back. The rainforest in Subic has been touted as a tourist attraction, a great ecological resource. But obviously, even as the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority was bragging about its forests, it was handing out permits (with the help of the national government) to allow the planting of buildings where trees used to grow.
And it took whistle-blowers from the citizenry to alert media: otherwise no one would be the wiser.
But now that the public knows what’s taking place, what’s next?
The usual finger-pointing will follow: Who are responsible for this depredation? And the foreign investors will be the target of criticism, though the real criticism should be aimed at the local and national officials who allowed the foreign investors to do what they pleased.
We predict that no one will take the blame, because incumbent officials will point to their predecessors; and officialdom, past and present, will claim that much as it makes no sense, they have lovely maps showing that indeed, building apartments in the middle of a rainforest had been well-planned all along.
And if environmentalists insist on making noise about the ongoing construction, and demand that officials should be held to account, why then, officials can resort to that tried and tested government line, “Show us your evidence,” followed by “Bring it to court.”
Of course the public can point out that the buildings are there, and the rainforest has obviously been reduced, and the damage has been done. But officials will likely go scot-free; the buildings will remain, a monument to deceit.
We can all repeat Jose P. Laurel’s injunction that no one can love the Filipinos better than the Filipinos love themselves—and keep doing so until we’re collectively blue in the face. The problem is no one can sell out Filipino interests better than Filipino officials. It doesn’t matter if a plan allowing the construction of the “Subic forest apartments” exists, or if a cover-up would take place after the fact to justify it. The point is, it clearly makes no sense to punch a hole in the rainforest to build apartments.
Lip service goes hand in hand with a general policy that encourages the trumping of transparency to ensure impunity for the accountable. The ongoing construction in the Subic rainforest points to a government that views governance as a race—to do what it wants, so long as it keeps a step ahead of anyone who might have a contrary opinion to whatever it has set out to do. Anyway, in the end, so long as government gets what it wants, it will be generations of Filipinos yet to come who will pay for it.
Anywhere else, a society that cares for the environment and believes in public servants being held accountable for their actions would see the SBMA purged of its incumbent board, the environment secretary handing in his resignation, and Congress initiating an investigation due to pressure from an outraged environmental movement.
Instead, only in the Philippines would we get what we will get: nothing.
At least, when the present government wanted to lay waste to the La Mesa watershed area, environmentalists raised the alarm in time. This time, they got to be heard too late. And the fixers who made this latest ecological depredation possible are laughing all the way to the bank—confident that they can get away with it after telling the compliant public, again, not to destabilize the “resurgent” economy, and to just move on.
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Anonymous, at 4/06/2008 6:31 AM
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