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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Monday, June 26, 2017
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BACOLOD City – An airline is interested to put up an airport in Sipalay City, southern Negros Occidental.
Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr. said the company, which he declined to name, informed him they were interested in having flights to Sipalay, Bacolod and Cebu cities.
The airline specializes in flights to small islands not served by major airlines.
Sipalay City has an airport but its runway needed concreting. Marañon said the plan and design has to come from the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) but the provincial government is will to financially support it.
CAAP is a body of the Department of Transportation that is responsible for the operation of all public airports in the Philippines except the major international airports.
The airport was formerly called Maricalum Airstrip and owned by Maricalum Mining Corp.
When the corporation shut down in 1996, the Regional Trial Court in Kabankalan awarded the airstrip to the city government of Sipalay.
In 2005, the city council of Sipalay passed City Ordinance 2005-009 expropriating the property as an airport.
The opening of the airport to commercial operations would boost the tourism initiative in southern Negros, said Sipalay City mayor Oscar Montilla Jr.
The only major airport in Negros Occidental is the Bacolod-Silay Airport some 15 kilometers northeast of Bacolod City. It sits on a 181-hectare site in Barangay Bagtic, Silay City.
A seaside city, Sipalay boasts of pristine beaches and stunning dive sites. These attract foreign and local tourists whole year round.
Marañon also announced that the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office pledged to provide a compression chamber in Sipalay City to service beach resort operators.
A compression chamber is a “hyperbaric treatment chamber used to treat divers suffering from certain diving disorders such as decompression sickness.”
“The progress in the southern part of Negros Occidental especially in Sipalay City and Hinoba-an cannot be stopped,” Marañon said, adding that the projects will “bring bigger developments” in this part of the province./PN
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