Quezon City – The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief-of-Staff Lieutenant General Felimon Santos Jr. has renewed his support to the Philippine Economic Zone Authority’s (PEZA) efforts in preparing the Filipinos to respond in times of manmade and natural disasters and in modernizing the Philippines’ Armed Forces through PEZA’s ecozone development program.
The support comes after PEZA Director General Charito Plaza together with PEZA Deputy Director Generals Justo Porfirio Yusingco and Tereso Panga as well as Philippine Ecozones Association (PHILEA) President Francisco Zaldarriaga and Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Foundation, Inc. (SEIPI) President Dan Lachica’s courtesy call at the AFP Headquarters at Camp Emilio Aguinaldo last February 13.
Creating Defense Industrial Complex as new ecozone
Plaza has shared the agency’s efforts to fully industrialize the country with the creation of new types of economic zones including the Defense Industrial Complexes, to be established among the potential ecozones of the AFP’s military reservation areas. The said ecozone will allow the manufacturing of military and defense equipment and weaponry in the country. According to the PEZA Chief, “they can start inviting defense industries whose products are what the AFP wanted to equip and modernize.”
According to Lt. Gen. Santos, modernizing the Philippine forces is now a priority as they have been behind military technology and equipage.
Plaza noted that “creating a Defense Industrial ecozone will not just modernize the country and the defense forces but will also create jobs and put to use the long been idle military reservation areas.” The Director General added that “because of our strategic location, we can also make the Philippines as the manufacturing hub of defense and other industries in the region.”
The PEZA Chief also suggested to have a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the AFP to clear up its regulatory powers on the proposed creation of a Defense Industrial Complex and its implications to the national security, the defense posture and strategies once defense-related industries starts to come in.
Strengthening the Military Reservist Program
The Director General also gave updates on the status of the Military Reservist Program for PEZA, ecozone and industry workers. The first batch of the Special Basic Citizens Military Training (SBCMT) for the PEZA employees and the workers of the PEZA-registered companies operating inside the PEZA economic zones nationwide has been conducted.
“PEZA’s unique structure with 404 operating ecozones and 4,478 locator companies, once trained, will provide 1.5 million directly and 7 million indirectly employed reservist manpower, as more than enough for the 80% Reserve component of the AFP,” said the PEZA Chief, who is a founding Reservist and Brigadier General of the AFP Reserve Force.
Plaza noted that PEZA is now proposing an Administrative Order (AO) to strengthen its reservist program. The AO seeks to: 1) institutionalize the participation of all government agencies, departments, bureaus, GOCCs, and Economic Zone Authorities as well as the LGUs and the private sector to become AFP Reservist Units; 2) the budget allocation for education and training, uniforms, equipage; 3) the role of government agencies and its employees in the event of emergencies and other forms of disasters/calamities, and in nation-building activities; and 4) encouraging the active participation of the private sector through allowable tax deductions on the expense for trainings and equipage of their employee reservist units.
Plaza noted that “everything included [in the proposed AO] are already existing, we just need to enhance it.” Lt. Gen. Santos said he’ll try to “present this to the President during the Joint AFP-PNP Command Conference at Malacañang.”
Setting up the Incident Command System and Center
Prompted by the recent Taal Volcano eruption, the PEZA Chief also added that the agency plans to put up its own Incident Command System (ICS) and Incident Command Center (ICC) in its new building.
According to Lt. Gen. Santos, the AFP will help PEZA to tie up with the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) for the trainings on how to handle disasters, emergencies and incident management and help in setting up its own ICS and ICC as well as emergency response plans specifically for ecozones and every company, with which PEZA is now requiring industries to comply.
The said plans are included in PEZA’s new 10-point program and special projects which will be launched and implemented respectively this year in line with the celebration of its 25th year anniversary. #