Dauis Mayor Marietta Sumaylo clears the air about the sweeper flight issue following allegations that there are people who made money out of the sweeper flights that brought some overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and locally stranded individuals (LSIs) back to Bohol.
Sumaylo went on air via Open Forum program on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020 and met The Bohol Tribune in an exclusive sit-down interview on Friday, Oct. 9, 2020 to air her side and refute the allegations.
The Dauis mayor who is also the Bohol chapter president of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) said that since the very start, her motivation for the realization of the sweeper flights was to assist those who were and who will be stranded in Manila by helping them return to Bohol via the sweeper flights.
But she said that now, there are no more new sweeper flights that will arrive in Bohol after Gov. Arthur Yap asked the three (3) airlines: Air Asia Philippines, Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines, to resume commercial flights and the subsequent reopening of the Bohol Panglao International Airport, Sumaylo said.
Moreover, the mayor told The Bohol Tribune in the sit-down interview that she is not affected about the allegations because they are not true and she seeks solace on the fact that she has helped a lot of Boholanos return and come home to the province.
Sumaylo added that she never engaged in the business involving travel and tours nor does she have any relative engaged in the said business activity.
Ever since, as LMP president and Dauis mayor, her involvement has been to help those who are stranded get the documents needed to travel and after the documents are in place, she would leave the organizing of the sweeper flights to the travel agents.
She said in the radio interview that she started exploring the idea of sweeper flights to help some Boholanos who were stranded outside of Bohol during the first few days of the lockdown in the country.
Being a parent, she saw the plight of the stranded Boholano students. She pitied some students from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños (UBLB) who are from Bohol and who were stranded in Manila. She said. So she helped them return to the province via the sweeper flights. She also told The Bohol Tribune in the sit-down interview that she also helped some students from other schools such as the Ateneo de Manila University and the University of Santo Tomas return to Bohol.
In order to help those who were stranded, she started to ask Malacañang’s help on how to go about finding a way to repatriate the stranded Boholanos.
She was told by people in Malacañang about Davao’s practice of having sweeper flights to bring people who are stranded in other places back home, Sumaylo said.
So, she then asked her friends who have travel agencies to broker a dialogue with the airline companies. After the business dialogues with some airline companies, she learned that some airline companies charge as much as P10,000 per seat, the mayor of Dauis added.
She also learned that Air Asia offered a fare of P6,000 per person, the cheapest rate among all. Knowing this, Mayor Sumaylo asked Air Asia representatives for a cheaper fare but was given the explanation why sweeper flights are costly. Air Asia agreed, ultimately, to lower the fare to P5,495 from P6,000, the mayor said.
Sumaylo added that she even asked Air Asia for free tickets to be given to indigent stranded individuals, which the airline company obliged.
In a sweeper flight, Sumaylo stressed, the passenger also pays for the unoccupied seats and pays, too, the cost of flying the plane back to Manila.
She challenged the critics and said that if they have problems with the high cost of airfare, they should ask the airline companies themselves.
The mayor also added that In the first few months of the general quarantine, her involvement in the sweeper flights was more on the facilitating of the travel documents. Starting June 2020, when each town already assigned a focal person for the returning LSIs, etc., Sumaylo said that she no longer involved herself in the processing of the documents needed for the return of LSIs to Bohol.
In addition, the lady mayor said that she never had anything to do with the organizing of the sweeper flights as the travel agents were (and are) doing the job. She emphasized, too, that she never received a single centavo as profit or income from those flights.
Sumaylo told The Bohol Tribune that the allegations hurled by a critic against the governor of Bohol about the sweeper flights is part of a demolition job against the governor. The Dauis mayor added that she feels sad that the governor is being attacked by this critic.
ALLEGATION
An administration critic, a certain Willie Ramasola, alleged that he was given inside information that the governor insists on blocking the return of regular flights in favor of sweeper flights with the help of a travel agent and Sumaylo.
The allegation says that there is a deliberate effort to make the sweeper flight airfare costly in order for those involved to make money.
In his allegations, Ramasola went on to say that he wants to expose the modus and lies of the governor.
In a radio interview on “Newsmakers ug Uban Pa” on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, Yap flatly denied that he is dipping his fingers into the matter concerning the sweeper flights . He said that he and even his family have never been engaging themselves into the business of being travel agents or tour operators.
The governor added that on Sept. 28, 2020, he wrote to the airline companies to ask them to resume the regular commercial flights after he received a deluge of requests from the public.
The governor acknowledged that Sumaylo was one of those present when the idea of the return of the commercial flights was discussed in meetings.
The Dauis mayor told The Bohol Tribune that she is in favor of the return of commercial flights that will carry the returning LSIs and OFWs for as long as the trips are properly scheduled to make it easier for the extraction teams from the various local government units to fetch the returning Boholanos from the airport of destination.