Subic Municipal Secretary Ricardo Otero said Mayor Jefferson Khonghun has called on concerned government agencies to look into the matter, with the end in view of instituting adequate safety measures at the Keppel shipbuilding and repair facility here.
“The mayor wants to get to the bottom of this, because he doesn’t want another tragedy to happen,” Otero said.
Khonghun had already condoled with the families of the victims, visited those in the hospital and sent local authorities to coordinate with Keppel officials, Otero added.
As of Sunday, six workers who figured in the accident had died. Five of them were killed on the spot when a massive steel ramp used in the repair of MV Tombarra, a 22,650-ton container ship, collapsed, pinning workers underneath.
Another victim succumbed on Saturday while being treated at the Lourdes International Medical Hospital in Olongapo City.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada called on the Department of Labor and Employment to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident.
“We must leave no stone unturned in examining all the circumstances behind this horrible incident, as well as all the factors that might have contributed to it,” said Estrada, chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development and the joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Labor and Employment.
Estrada added that while the Singaporean-owned Keppel has been given high marks in safety checks done by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza), and that the company is said to be taking full responsibility for the incident, it should also be determined if there was any lapse in the overall implementation of safety measures in the said workplace.
Meanwhile, the labor think-tank Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (Eiler) said it is high time for Congress to push for stricter regulation and monitoring of operations in special economic zones, especially on the issue of occupational health and safety.
Subic Keppel Shipyard Inc. operates as a Peza-registered company at a small special economic zone here, along with five other companies, Subic officials said.
Eiler Executive Director Anna Leah Escresa charged that Keppel was apparently trying to cover up the death of its workers, citing the reported refusal of the Singaporean company to allow local authorities to inspect the accident site.
“The latest accident in Keppel shipyard reveals that economic zones have ironically become exclusive territories of foreign firms which authorities cannot even enter even when Filipinos working inside are crushed to death,” Escresa said. “Alarmingly, bodies could be piling inside shipyards without the President and labor officials knowing about it.”
She added that Congress should conduct a critical review of Repubic Act 7916, or the Special Economic Zone Act of 1995, which gives foreign companies virtually total control over the economic zones aside from according them with tax holidays and other perks.
Otero, meanwhile, clarified that while Keppel authorities did not immediately report the accident and local authorities only learned about it from the barangay chairman of Cawag, where the shipyard was located, the Subic police were the ones who initially examined the accident site.
“The special economic zone here doesn’t have its own police force, so it had to rely on local investigators to examine the accident site.
