Uncontrolled Access To The Freeport

Comment from a reader on the fences surrounding the Freeport:

This year the fences surrounding SBMA are being breached and stolen.

If you study perimeter fence surrounding Taiwan industrial park, facing Olongapo river, or fences in Kalayaan, fences there are being removed by thieves. They are cutting galvanized metal pipes and also cutting holes in the fence. I don't know what SBMA LED dept is doing with this. If they do not take any action soon, the base will not be a gated community anymore. We we still have all the entry gates, but people are free to walk inside anywhere else.

There are something like 1000 police in LED dept and they are not doing to much to enforce the rules. Personnel are being transported from place to place continuously and you see Police cars all over, but if you approach them with any problem, they are not of much assistance and it is like you are burdening them.

Example, we have rules against loose dogs, motorbikes without silencers, garbage in street, etc, but police are just overlooking such. If you contact them to report, you first have to explain the rules, they will ask why you want to report, and give a lot of information about yourself.

The whole attitude of this force should change into something more productive, as of now they are not justifying the big numbers.

[The Subic Bulletin] Tragically your observations are correct, over a year ago the Subic Bay Freeport Chamber of Commerce presented the SBMA with a report and photographs relating to hundreds of fence breaches, this included a gate big enough to drive a truck through. There is even a trike service running inside the fence.

SBMA's response to the report was that the people outside the fence used the hundreds of holes they made in the fence to retrieve water and use the land inside the Freeport for farming, they seemed to think that this somehow made it OK. It was clear their concerns were greater for the people outside than the people inside, after all when the LED officers finish work they ARE the people on the outside, so without any strong management directives from SBMA they are quite happy to gradually let their compares slowly move further and further inside.

I also makes you wonder why the SBMA would deliberately have a gate big enough to drive a truck through. Is this SBMA's secret smuggling gate?