“History repeats
itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
Karl
Marx
By
Alex P. Vidal
WE are worried that the incessant and continuous pressures
applied on contractors to finish the P700-million Iloilo Convention Center
(ICC) before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministerial meetings might
result in another construction catastrophe.
God forbid.
The Manila film center tragedy is still fresh on our
mind.
Because of pressures to finish the project before
the international film festival hosted by Manila on January 18, 1981, construction
of the $25-million building was expedited when delays hampered the project.
Delays have also been experienced in the ICC project
with no less than APEC National Organizing Committee (NOC) head, Ambassador
Marciano Paynor Jr., expressing concern during a visit in Iloilo City February
24.
“Until it is built, it is a concern. Once it is
finish, the concern is gone,” Paynor announced shortly after being informed
that the main venue of the meetings is still being constructed.
Iloilo City will host two APEC ministerial meetings
in September and October.
CONCERN
We understand Paynor’s concern but we need to have
faith in the capability of the contractors to beat the deadline without
sacrificing quality.
In the ill-fated Manila film center, the project
required 4,000 workers as the deadline drew nearer.
Under pressure, they worked in three shifts, around
the clock.
Tragedy struck when the upper scaffold collapsed,
sending workers falling into wet cement at 3’oclock in the morning on November
17.
Some of them were impaled on upright steel bars,
according to witnesses whose testimonies were not included in the newspapers
that carried the news.
Media was under control during Martial Law.
Then First Lady Imelda Marcos was immediately
informed about the tragedy and was told the recovery of the bodies would take a
lot of time.
As many as 169 bodies were allegedly covered with
cement when Mrs. Marcos ordered the construction to continue as planned so as
not to incur further delays.
CEMENT
Some of those who fell into the cement may have been
buried alive, critics of the Marcos dictatorship claimed.
We asked Mrs. Marcos about this incident when she
campaigned for president in 1992 and she called the story as a “blatant lie.”
She told us there was only a single casualty and
that enemies of the Marcoses “bloated” the figure “out of malice and out of
spite.”
We read the news in the Daily Express (we had a daily copy in the house) and the article
did not mention the death of more than one worker.
Independent chronicler of historical events, Lisa
Waller Rogers, claimed that “the full story has never been told, as news crews,
rescuers, and ambulance teams were barred from the scene for nine full hours,
while the government, under martial law, prepared its official version of
events, censoring all news and silencing all witnesses.”
CANNES
Mrs. Marcos, Rogers said, wanted Manila to rival
Cannes as a world film capital. She described the project as “grandiose and
expensive; the building on Manila Bay was designed to look like the Parthenon.”
Hilmarc’s Construction also bagged the second phase of
the 3,700-seater convention only two weeks ago.
The Small and Medium Enterprise meeting is from
Sept. 21 to 25 while the High Level Policy Dialogue on Food Security and the
Blue Economy is from Sept. 28 to Oct. 6.
Like the international film festival that the Manila
film center hosted in 1981, Ilonggos are also excited to host part of the APEC
meetings this year barring unforeseen construction and political circumstances.
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