MANILA, 26 March 2003 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday saw Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) departing for work abroad and told them the country badly needs their help more than ever.
“Please send dollars to the Philippines,” she told the OFWs preparing to board their flight at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Overseas Filipinos, numbering about 7 million, sent home at least $7 billion last year, becoming one of the biggest source of dollars for the Philippine economy. Of the number, 1.3 million are in the Middle East.
The president was on a surprise inspection at the airport, during which she gave the airport manager and police a public tongue-lashing over lax security.
Arroyo, who has vowed to do everything to prevent terror attacks, saw vehicles entering a sprawling parking lot without being inspected and noticed people not being frisked.
She hastily called airport manager Edgardo Manda on a cell phone and gave him an initial dressing down within earshot of bodyguards and journalists.
“I want it corrected now. Correct it right now,” Arroyo blared, pacing the parking lot under the scorching sun.
When Manda appeared, she yelled at him, saying: “I stood there for five minutes, five cars passed but they were not inspected. What if there was a bomb in one of them?”
Arroyo moved on to a waiting area for arriving passengers, still visibly irked as she talked with airport officials and police. At one point, when Manda tried to explain himself, Arroyo cut him off: “I don’t want explanations. I want results.”
She cooled off a bit when she proceeded to the departure area to greet departing passengers.
Arroyo ordered airport officials to make security personnel more visible to the public, inspect all vehicles, including diplomatic cars, and deploy more bomb-sniffing dogs.
She was frisked herself at the airport to remind people of the importance of cooperating with security checks to prevent bomb attacks similar to one that killed 21 people, including an American, outside the international airport in southern Davao City on March 4. Muslim separatists were blamed for the attack.
Manda admitted he had not known the president would be dropping by.
From NAIA Terminal 1, she motored to the nearby Manila Domestic Airport. She did not enter the premises, though. Then she dropped by the Philtranco bus terminal in Pasay City. In an interview there, she said that for the duration of the US-Iraq war her focus would be on the safety of Filipinos in the Middle East.
“Our number-two job is to make sure that we are safe from terrorist attacks. That’s why I’m going through all this trouble of looking at security preparations,’’ she said.
The Philippines, one of Washington’s staunchest Asian allies in the global war on terrorism, has increasingly been sensitive to security threats because of recent bombings, and after it joined last week the “coalition of the willing.”
