Growth corridors rising between Subic and Clark

(Last of three parts)

CLARK FREEPORT—Manny Torres, former vice president of the Federation of Filipino Civilian Employees Association (FFCEA) at the United States military bases, toured Subic and Clark freeports for a reunion with colleagues a few weeks before the 20th anniversary of the junking of the 1947 RP-US Military Bases Agreement in September.

The sentimental trip ended with Torres feeling disappointed that the US Navy brought out all equipment from the ship repair facility in the Subic freeport.

“We could have created an industry supporting interisland vessels and deep-sea fishing,” he said.

A modern container port has risen, funded by Japan and bolstered by the construction of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway. The Subic airport is much like a ghost town, though.

Like in FFCEA’s time, labor exploitation remains in both Subic and Clark. The FFCEA had mounted three strikes then to demand fair wages. Back then, Filipino workers hired by US military services for office jobs got $2,300 a year, which was half of what was given to Koreans and seven times lower than what the Japanese received.

“Contractualization,” a scheme where workers are hired for a short stint, has become the norm, workers interviewed by the Inquirer said.

Few labor unions exist in Clark and Subic and issues on wages and benefits are resolved through dialogues. For most, though, rates are within and a little beyond the minimum wage rates.

Some jobs are hazardous, especially in shipbuilding work, where more than 30 workers have died while at work in the Korean-owned Hanjin shipyard in Subic.

The group Wedpro, which took part in the University of the Philippines baselands study, centered its recommendations on improving the conditions of women, urban poor, Aetas and base workers who were seen to be most affected by the bases pullout.

Like the US Air Force, the Clark Development Corp. (CDC) and Clark International Airport Corp. (CIAC) dealt with squatters. In almost 20 years, the agencies had compensated some 1,000 farmers to vacate farms in Clark’s main zone to secure lands for the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) and industrial estates.

But Daniel Dizon and 87 other farmers assert their right to till the remaining 193 hectares, some 500 meters northeast of the DMIA.

They claimed that their parents had been given rights to farm the area through the government’s Green Revolution program in Clark in 1982.

Dizon’s group has gone to the Court of Appeals to stop the CIAC from evicting them.

Planners had earlier expected land-related issues to slow down the conversion.

The thrust of the Legislative-Executive Bases Council (LEBC) to maximize the development of the baselands returned by the US to the Philippines has not been realized because Aetas, the original settlers in Clark and Subic, continue to resist several terms of a joint management agreement (JMA) with the CDC over 10,000 hectares covered by a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title.

In Subic, a JMA with Aetas has been hammered only recently.

“It was better when the Americans were here. There was no conflict,” said Juanito Laxamana, an Aeta elder in Mabalacat town.

CDC officials always had to deal with congressional representatives intervening for solutions to conflicting land uses or quarrel over lands in Clark’s subzones.

In a letter to the LEBC, former Bataan Governor Leonardo Roman said Subic was a deterrent to the progress of Bataan because it occupied two-thirds of the naval base (9,611 ha of land and 4,450 ha of water). While the province has no control over those areas, it is compensated by getting 1 to 2 percent out of the 5 percent gross income earned by locators.

UP professor Roland Simbulan, who has written about Philippine and US relations, defense and security policies, said a people-oriented kind of development is needed to emerge in conversion policies and programs to make the former baselands more beneficial to Filipinos.

For everything that is good or lacking or in what Clark, Subic and the other baselands have become, the basic truth is that the Senate made a right decision in rejecting the treaty extension, said Felicito Payumo, now chairman of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) and the Subic-Clark Alliance Development Council (SCADC).

“On the basis of employment alone, I think it was a good decision,” Payumo said. “Development is not confined anymore to Clark and Subic. Growth corridors are rising in between.”

What the SCADC should do as early as now is to make sure that the Subic-Clark area “won’t end up in a mess like Metro Manila,” said Rufo Colayco, former CDC president and BCDA chairman.