Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said on Friday, March 10 the filing of administrative cases should have been recommended against key officials and personnel of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) for the New Year’s Day fiasco.
The minority leader said that while the system glitch incident that occurred may not have been considered criminal negligence, there could have been at least be made held accountable administratively.
The Senate Committee on Public Services, chaired by Sen. Grace Poe earlier released the panel’s findings on the system glitch that affected about 65,000 travelers whose flights were either canceled, delayed or diverted last Jan. 1, 2023.
The panel ruled out sabotage and cyberattack as the cause of the technical glitch.
“Let’s say it was not hacking, not a terrorist act, but there was a problem with the equipment…therefore, there must have been negligence to the point there is no fool proof system in place or if there was but it wasn’t followed,” Pimentel said in a Zoom interview.
“We should have held somebody accountable for the fiasco,” the senator said.
The panel did not recommend the filing of any criminal cases against officials of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP).
But Pimentel said there cases should be filed even if the actions are not considered criminal in nature.
“Dapat meron ding managot if yung negligence di umabot sa criminal it must be an administrative an infraction,” Pimentel said.
Poe’s committee report identified the malfunctioning equipment including the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), circuit breaker and the automatic voltage regulator, which was worsened by several underlying issues that all happened on New Year’s Day and ultimately led to a system failure.