COA questions obsolete equipment purchase at Mactan int’l airport

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GOVERNMENT auditors have asked the management of Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) to explain the procurement of three units of an outdated communications system.

The system was supposed to broadcast emergency warnings within airport premises but is now incompatible with existing equipment.

According to the 2023 audit report on the MCIAA released on December 16, 2024, the three units of Mobile SAR/GSM Text Broadcast System “are practically useless since they cannot send text messages to 4G (LTE) and 5G devices which majority, if not all of the passengers and airport personnel, are already using.”

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The audit team conducted two inspections on August 22, 2023 and October 24, 2023 and found that while all three units were then operational, they could only send messages to devices that are using 2G and 3G frequencies.

The report assessed that this equipment “made them a little better than chunks of metal and plastic as far as the MCIAA’s objective of rapid dissemination of information” that “may be crucial in saving lives and/or property” in times of emergency or disaster.”

Inspectors said they did not receive any message despite assurances from airport management that the test warnings would be sent and received as long as their phones were within range of the mobile equipment in the MCIAA premises.

“On the second inspection, it was observed that when switching to other mobile connectivity, no automatic switch feature was present, thus, the desired connectivity for 2G, 3G, 4G or 5G has to be manually selected. Using 4G or 5G no SMS message was received from the test phones, not until the test phone was manually switched back to 2G/3G connectivity,” auditors said.

Purchase records showed the transaction took place in January 2019.

The audit team pointed out that the acquisition date was already “way beyond the rollout of the 4G/LTE technology in 2007.”

“As such, MCIAA should have procured equipment that is 4G/LTE compatible, or at least 4G/LTE ready, since LTE/4G was introduced more than 10 years earlier, instead of being only compatible with 2G and 3G mobile phones,” the team said.

Since the target beneficiary of the equipment are the passengers, auditors said it does not serve its purpose to ensure airport terminal safety and passenger protection.

“To put (the matter) in perspective, the mobile generations network capabilities started way back in 1979 to the present (2023).  The 2G and 3G network commercial implementation had been around for 18 years, from 1991 to 2009, before 4G/LTE was introduced somewhere in the year 2007,” the COA said.

Auditors noted that the equipment was acquired at the request of the MCIAA Emergency and Security Services Department, but all three units have since been turned over to the International Terminal Operation Division (ITOD).

Responding to the audit observations, the MCIAA assured COA that it has already updated one of the three units to serve more recent 4G and 5G handheld gadgets but work on the other two would depend on the availability of funding.

At the same time, it said it could not offer any justification as to why a near-obsolete system was purchased since the transaction happened under the past administration.

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