PHILIPPINE Airlines (PAL) has warned its former employees picketing the airline’s Inflight Center in Pasay City not to hamper the flow of business, stressing that they have no right to prevent catering vans or any of PAL’s vehicles and workers from entering or leaving the facility.
PAL issued the statement after one of its catering trucks which was about to exit PAL’s Inflight Center (IFC) along Miaa Road was blocked by protesting former PAL employees at close to six o’clock on Saturday morning. Wielding night sticks, planks with spikes and barbed wire, the protesters harassed the driver and set aflame a carton box in front of the truck to prevent the vehicle from exiting the compound, the PAL statement added.
A standoff ensued between protesters and PAL guards stationed at IFC’s Gate 1. Eventually, the catering truck and PAL’s shield-wielding guards retreated. One guard, Russel Tiongson, was rushed to San Juan de Dios Hospital after suffocating from the toxic fumes emitted by the burning box with kerosene.
“We decry this continuing harrassment of our drivers and employees. PAL has every reason to protect airline equipment, its workers and those of its service providers from threats or actual physical harm. The Constitution guarantees PAL’s right to free and unhampered access to and from its own facility,” the airline said in a statement.
As this developed, PAL management vehemently denied allegations that PAL hired “goons” to disperse protesters.
The flag carrier said it will never resort to extra legal means to remove the protesters even as the company denounced acts of harrasment of the ex-PAL employees against PAL Security personnel.
“Given their [ex-PAL workers] propensity to make up stories, it could even be surmised that the so-called goons were actually hired by the protesters themselves to make PAL look bad in the public eye. The timing, in fact, is suspicious since there are thousands of PAL passengers going to the airport during this peak travel season. The commotion would certainly catch the attention of the riding public,” the company added.
In Photo: Protesting ex-PAL workers set aflame a kerosene- soaked carton box to block a PAL catering truck from exiting its inflight catering facility. The same protesters placed wooden planks with spikes and barbed wire to deny the airline of free ingress and egress to its facility which houses the inflight catering and cabin services division.
