You plan to move to the Philippines? Wollen Sie auf den Philippinen leben?

There are REALLY TONS of websites telling us how, why, maybe why not and when you'll be able to move to the Philippines. I only love to tell and explain some things "between the lines". Enjoy reading, be informed, have fun and be entertained too!

Ja, es gibt tonnenweise Webseiten, die Ihnen sagen wie, warum, vielleicht warum nicht und wann Sie am besten auf die Philippinen auswandern könnten. Ich möchte Ihnen in Zukunft "zwischen den Zeilen" einige zusätzlichen Dinge berichten und erzählen. Viel Spass beim Lesen und Gute Unterhaltung!


Visitors of germanexpatinthephilippines/Besucher dieser Webseite.Ich liebe meine Flaggensammlung!

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Showing posts with label Clark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clark. Show all posts

Thursday, November 24, 2022

Global Peace Festival set in Clark

By The Manila Times


THE Global Peace Foundation will host the Global Peace Festival 2022 on December 1 to 3 at Clark Global City in Pampanga with the theme "One Family Under God: A Vision for a World of Freedom and Peace."


The event, which was launched on Wednesday at the Marriott Hotel in Clark, Pampanga, will gather thousands of global peace advocates from all over the world. It will provide them with a platform to exchange best practices and build multisector collaborations to promote long-term peace and development.


The Philippine national motto will be highlighted at the event — Maka-Diyos, Maka-tao, Makakalikasan at Makabansa (For God, People, Nature and Country). The phrase expresses a collection of four essential Filipino principles, each of which is linked to the others.

"It is exactly in times of uncertainty that a clear vision is needed to provide solutions to the many vexing problems of our age," Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon, chairman of the Global Peace Foundation, said in his speech.


The three-day event will feature three major programs — the Service Learning Program, Global Peace Leadership Conference and the Global Peace Festival.


The Service-Learning Program focuses primarily on young people and addresses local issues in celebration of International Volunteers' Day through simultaneous service project missions by women and the youth.


The Global Peace Leadership Conference is a high-level strategic event that aims to build networks of key leaders and address critical issues on education, women, corporate social responsibility, religious freedom, peace and security, and the media.


The Global Peace Festival, meanwhile, will be the highlight of the event. It aims to inspire, motivate and activate a global network of people to work together to realize the dream of One Family Under God.


The famous KPop co-ed group K.A.R.D, PPop Girl Group BINI and the Filipino Autotelic will perform live and free of charge during the peace concert.


The main organizer, Global Peace Foundation, is an international nonsectarian, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization established in 2009. It aims to promote an innovative, values-based approach for peace motivated by the idea of One Family Under God.


The Global Peace Festival was first launched in the Philippines in 2007.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Can Clark or Bulacan airport fix NAIA woes?




By: Paolo Romero (The Philippine Star)
MANILA, Philippines — Senators have renewed their call for the development of easily accessible international gateways that can serve as alternatives to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), which was paralyzed for almost two days last week after a Chinese passenger jet blocked the main runway.
Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito, vice chairman of the Senate committee on public services, said the NAIA is already handling 42 million passengers a year or way beyond its annual capacity of 30 million passengers.
“Another airport that can be considered a better alternative and more modern than NAIA is a long-term solution. If, God forbid, another accident happens, and we don’t have a twin airport, what then? The consequences could be worse than what we saw,” he said.
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San Miguel Corp., which has proposed to develop a new four-runway airport—dubbed the New Manila International Airport (NMIA)—in Bulacan said it could commence operations in as early as six years upon approval of the $15-billion project.
The business group Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) is also calling on the government to fast-track the approval of a private sector proposal to upgrade the NAIA to address congestion—this being the most cost-effective and fastest solution to the severe congestion at the Manila airport.
The NAIA Consortium—composed of Aboitiz InfraCapital, AC Infrastructure Holdings, Alliance Global Group, Asia’s Emerging Dragon, Filinvest Development, JG Summit Holdings and Metro Pacific Investments—has secured an original proponent status (OPS) for its offer to upgrade the main international gateway for about P106 billion for a concession period of 15 years.
An OPS would give the consortium the right to match offers from other parties when a Swiss challenge is conducted for the project.
Ejercito said it is vital that the new airport or the new terminal at the Clark International Airport (CIA) should be accompanied by an intermodal transport connection terminal, including a high-speed railway.
He said the construction of phase 1 of the new terminal at Clark—budgeted with P17.6 billion—is now 15 percent complete and expected to open in 2020.
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III urged the government to “go full blast” with the development of other air transport hubs such as the CIA, stressing that: “We can’t dillydally anymore. I made the same call in 2016. Let’s not wait for another airplane incident which hassled thousands of passengers to realize there should be an urgent and comprehensive government plan to decongest the NAIA.”
He said the NAIA can serve southern Metro Manila and Southern Luzon to Bicol while Clark can address the needs of passengers from northern Metro Manila and northern Philippines, and that both hubs may share the handling of travel and logistics flow to the Visayas and Mindanao.
The underutilized airport in the former US military base at Clark in Pampanga has an area of 2,367 hectares, compared to NAIA’s 700 hectares.
Pimentel pointed out that with NAIA’s single runway, flight delays average 45 minutes per day aside from monstrous traffic jams to and from the airport.
He noted that Clark could eventually service “flight transfers of international passengers, such as our OFWs, who need to go home to their families in the Visayas and Mindanao.”
“If you’re going to the province anyway via a connecting flight and you don’t need to stay in Manila, Clark International could be a better transfer point. Proposals such as these can work and should be tried,” he said, adding that the development of Clark should be a core component of the government’s Build, Build, Build program.
As the upgrade of NAIA is being undertaken, the MAP said a concurrent expansion of Clark would ensure that future air traffic bottlenecks are prevented.
“The MAP urges the adoption of an airport complementation strategy whereby the existing NAIA and Clark international airports are developed and operated as an integrated system with the two airports complementing each other, ideally with an express rail link in place,” the group said, adding that it opposes the closure of NAIA as this would be a “very drastic and counterproductive move.” – With Louella Desiderio, Iris Gonzales

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Clark as new NCR?


Clark as new NCR?



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It took us over two hours to check out the new developments in Clark and we didn’t even get to see the proposed site of the new Clark City because it was way further off. Even with light traffic, it takes time to go around Clark because it is just too expansive. It is easy for a space oppressed Metro Manila resident to be overwhelmed.
Flat lands, rolling hills and even mountains can be found at Clark. In the area known as Clark Sun Valley, a well maintained and challenging golf course has been attracting Koreans for some time now. A new Hilton Hotel is being constructed as you drive up the clubhouse. And the panoramic view is simply fantastic.
Feverish construction activities are all over the Clark Freeport as they rush facilities for the ASEAN summit conference late this year. A master planned 177-hectare development known as the Clark Global Gateway City is fast rising to rival Metro Manila’s central business districts with its extra wide avenues and underground utility connections.

The first building to be completed is the now functioning Medical City’s Clark hospital which was built from scratch. The buildings intended to house various business offices are interconnected and reveal a close attention to the interrelationship of buildings, people and the environment. There are wide sidewalks and bicycle paths. A solar energy installation is providing half of Clark’s needs.
They are finally serious about modernizing and expanding Clark’s airport. The BCDA, not DOTr, is bidding out the construction of the new French designed terminal that is good for up to eight million passengers. After construction has been awarded, BCDA will also award the operations and management to a qualified private sector entity. It should be able to start operations by 2020.
As far as I know, BCDA was ready to bid out and complete the Clark airport as early as 2012 until Mar Roxas transferred it to DOTC without consulting BCDA. That was a few months after I last visited Clark to get a briefing from then airport head Chichos Luciano.
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Indeed I recall BCDA’s energetic former president, Arnel Casanova, fighting hard to have it returned. The worst part is that Mar and P-Noy did not appoint members to the airport’s board of directors for about two years so that absolutely nothing moved. Mar wasted the time and talent of Chichos who had great plans that is only now being realized.
Then again, even after P-Noy appointed a cousin to head Clark airport, it didn’t help. He and former DOTC sec. Abaya ignored him for the most part. That’s why nothing happened until now.
Art Tugade knew this sad situation as CDC head at that time. I am sure it is Art who worked to return the Clark airport project to BCDA in this administration. Art knows BCDA, a corporate entity, can do the project faster and better. Art, unlike most bureaucrats and politicians, is not after turf protection… he just wants the project done.
BCDA and CDC also recently received an unsolicited proposal to build a government center from the group that helped build Malaysia’s Putrajaya.  If the proposal is taken seriously by BCDA and CDC, six government departments will be the first tenants of the new buildings. Best of all, there are no front end costs for the taxpayers. The proponents will be compensated as the facilities are used.
It seems it is all systems go to develop Clark as a new National Capital Region. Of course that will take time, but the attraction of the proposal is to move government offices out of Metro Manila and into Clark. 
Unbearable describes the feeling that comes from the severe congestion being felt in an expanded metro area of over 25 million souls. We all suffer daily traffic jams. And living conditions for the poor are so inhuman something has to give.
Just before he took over the transportation department, Sec. Art Tugade said he wants to decongest Metro Manila. It isn’t a cure all but it should help.
Tugade said he would, among others, propose to stop giving tax incentives for BPOs and other industries locating within Metro Manila to alleviate transport congestion problems. Indeed, they should just reject all pending applications for PEZA BPO incentives to property developers who insist on building within Metro Manila.
Ordinary Metro Manilans can only agree with Tugade. Many of us view Metro Manila as increasingly dysfunctional or even unlivable. Many of us see the need to decongest it by relocating major urban functions or building new cities outside the existing metropolitan area.
Urban planner Dr. Art Corpuz, in a recent paper, agrees that Metro Manila’s problems are indeed unacceptable, especially based on international benchmarks, but he is not convinced moving out of Metro Manila by itself is the right response. In other words, he asks, if something is broken, do you discard it (by moving to another location) or do you fix it in its place?
Dr. Corpuz warned of unintended consequences. “If the relatively low density government activities in the Malacañang, Batasan and other affected areas are replaced by high density, large scale commercial and residential uses (following the prevailing practice of maximizing government revenues from the disposition of public land), then it is likely that congestion, at least in those parts of Metro Manila, will worsen.”
Dr. Corpuz pointed out that “in the case of the 240-hectare portion of Fort Bonifacio that government auctioned off in 1995, total gross floor area has increased more than 10 times since it was initially redeveloped. It has been transformed into the second largest business district and one of the largest traffic generators in the country.”
Dr. Corpuz also observed that bigness by itself is not the problem. “It is also difficult to equate density, which is one of the most easily perceived characteristics of an urban area, to levels and perceptions of quality of life.
“Services and environmental conditions in some higher density urban areas are much better than in Metro Manila. In Hong Kong, where quality of life is arguably much better, Kowloon has a density of over 45,100 persons/sqkm; the density of the Kwun Tong district is even higher at 56,300 persons/sqkm. (An area of Hong Kong even reaches 400,000 persons/sqkm.) These are higher than Metro Manila’s 20,300 persons/sqkm or even the 40,400 persons/sqkm of the city of Manila, which approximates the scale of Kowloon…”
Dr. Corpuz is of the opinion that “there is no basis for saying that Metro Manila or any other city is too big and over-concentrated…” He correctly pointed out that we just failed to deliver primary government responsibilities to the extent similar to other cities…
Ultimately, Dr. Corpuz concludes, “city size and density thresholds are products of history, governance and technology, and none may be considered as empirical absolute limits.” But the reality is that it is doubtful our government (national and LGUs) will ever be able to put greed and vested interest aside and do what is right for Metro Manila.
This is why the points of Dr. Corpuz considered, I still think we ought to work to make Clark bloom if only to show our people we are capable of having a well – planned and well – managed city. Seeing it happen in Clark should hopefully make us realize that the mayors have been sleeping on their jobs and should be kicked out.
I hope the enthusiasm of Clark officials won’t fade until they are able to deliver on the promises. They have everything they need to have a model major city… from an international airport to hotels, resorts and the factories and businesses that are the envy of other areas. The only thing I didn’t see them doing or planning to do is a good public transport system.
Still, it is morale boosting to see the current heads of BCDA and CDC actually moving projects forward. No more excuses… let’s get going now.
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.