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Manila Bulletin devider devider Operation of mothballed Cotabato airport assured

Operation of mothballed Cotabato airport assured

Published Jun 11, 2019 06:23 pm
By Ali Macabalang COTABATO CITY – The P590-million airport in M’lang, North Cotabato will be in operation soon as an additional hub for passenger and cargo flights in Cen­tral Mindanao, Governor-elect Nancy Catamco has assured. M’lang airport runway (PHOTO FROM MUNICIPALITY OF M'LANG / FACEBOOK / MANILA BULLETIN) M’lang airport runway (PHOTO FROM MUNICIPALITY OF M'LANG / FACEBOOK / MANILA BULLETIN) Catamco said the completion of the M’lang airport will be one of her priori­ties once she assumes office on July 1. What will be called the Central Min­danao Airport (CMA), a brainchild of for­mer North Cotabato governor and now Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol, was built with an initial P430-million budget. Its terminal building and 1.2-kilometer runway were inaugurated by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in November 2009. “The mothballed airport must be op­erational so we will have three airports (in Central Mindanao),” Catamco said in a statement, referring to two others as the Cotabato airport in Datu Odin Sin­suat, Maguindanao and the Gen. Santos City International Airport. Apart from North Cotabato, resi­dents in adjacent Maguindanao and Sul­tan Kudarat provinces will benefit from the CMA, which can cater to 3.3 million people yearly, according to proponents including Piñol. But Piñol said the airport’s opera­tions have been “mothballed” since his political defeat to staunch rival Emmy­lou Talino-Mendoza in the 2010 guberna­torial elections. Taliño-Mendoza “declared that she will not touch the project, claiming its construction was sub-standard,” Piñol said in an article he posted on the M’lang local government website on January 17, 2013. While it was idle, the airport’s run­way had been occasionally used as race ground by motorcycle riders, while its grass meadows serve as pasture area by residents’ livestock. The CMA operation opened in 2016, but only for the use of its runway by cloud-seeding planes tapped by the office of Gov. Mendoza to “recharge” watersheds while North Cotabato was placed under state of calamity due to El Niño incidence that year. The provincial government allocat­ed P3.4 million for the 60-hour contract for cloud seeding operation in the wake of reported dry spell damages on rice, corn, oil palm, coconut, rubber, cacao, and coffee plants worth P402.74 million
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