THE government’s rehabilitation project in Pag-asa, particularly the construction of a beaching ramp and the repair of a runway, is ongoing, despite the “swarming” of boats carrying Chinese militiamen disguised as fishermen, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said on Tuesday.
He said the construction and improvement projects were ongoing as planned despite the hundreds of Chinese vessels near and around the island in the West Philippine Sea.
“The repair that we are undertaking is ongoing. They are not cutting it off,” the defense chief told a digital news program of television network GMA, referring to the project and the sustained presence of Chinese fishing boats in the area.
The Chinese government had earlier acknowledged that the Philippine defense department’s rehabilitation project on Pag-asa Island, which is disputed by China, triggered its move to deploy its “fishermen” in the territory that it is contesting, apparently to stall the project.
However, while Beijing protests the rehabilitation project, it has continuously built, fortified and armed the features that it developed within its claimed territory and those it disputed, transforming them into massive military bases.
The presence of Chinese fishing boats near and around Pag-asa—including Sandy Cay that Lorenzana
said is still in Manila’s possession but which Supreme Court Senior Associate
Justice Antonio Carpio said has been lost to China since 2017—has sparked
complaints from Filipino fishermen of harassment and
intimidation.
The fishermen claimed they could no longer fish or are having difficulty fishing in waters within and surrounding Pag-asa Island, the seat of the local government of the Kalayaan Municipality in the West Philippine Sea.
While Lorenzana did not disclose the status of the ongoing projects, he said in October last year that the rehabilitation was targeted to be finished, supposedly in December 2018, as told to him by the contractors.
The improvement of the facilities at Pag-asa, including the construction of the beaching ramp and the repair of the Rancudo Airfield, was funded with P1.6 billion in 2017, but the works have been affected by the government’s “on and off” spat with China, which was supposed to have already improved under President Duterte.
The government has targeted to first construct the beaching ramp in order to support the delivery or landing of needed materials for the upgrading of the airfield, but the US think thank CSIS recently reported that both the construction of the ramp and the runway were being undertaken at the same time.