Former Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade should be invited to the Senate’s investigation into the supposed energy outage that induced flight disruptions on the Ninoy Aquino Airport on January 1, Senator Jinggoy Estrada mentioned Tuesday.
The lawmaker made the comment after Bilyonaryo.com reported that Tugade allegedly used the P13 billion funds for the communications, navigation, surveillance/air site visitors administration (CNS/ATM) for different functions such because the set up of digital billboards and the concreting of parking areas exterior the NAIA terminals.
“Siguro we also have to invite former Secretary Tugade to shed light on it. Kung talagang ginastos niya sa ibang paraan. Pero what I heard from the [former] secretary, I think he already gave a statement, na hindi niya ginastos ‘yung P13 billion sa iba’t ibang gastusin,” he mentioned in a digital interview.
GMA News Online sought Tugade’s touch upon the matter however he has but to reply as of posting time.
Hundreds of flights and hundreds of passengers had been affected by an influence outage on the Philippine Air Traffic Management Center (ATMC) on Sunday.
In specific, officers mentioned that one of many uninterruptible energy provides (UPS) failed on Sunday morning, and troubleshooting actions needed to be performed.
Once the system was reconnected to the facility provide, nevertheless, warnings had been launched at round lunch time because of over voltage as 380 volts had been coming in as an alternative of 220 volts. This then affected the very small aperture terminal (VSAT), which additionally needed to be addressed.
In the identical interview, Estrada mentioned that the attainable cyberattack shouldn’t be discounted as the rationale for the shutdown.
“We should look into it. We cannot discount cyberattacks na yan. Hindi natin alam if pinapasukan na tayo ng mga terorista sa ating bansa. Let’s not be too complacent about it,” he mentioned.
Earlier within the day, Estrada filed a decision in search of a Senate investigation into the fiasco that occurred within the nation’s most important gateway on New Year’s Day.—LDF, GMA Integrated News
