Lapsed into law: Republic Act 11782 says PMMA will have a Mindanao campus in Cagayan de Oro City

PMMA will have a Mindanao campus
July 27, 2022 https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/07/27/business/maritime/pmma-will-have-...

THE Philippine Merchant Marine Academy (PMMA) in San Narciso, Zambales will have a new campus in Cagayan de Oro (CDO) City in Misamis Oriental soon.

The bill seeking to create the PMMA-CDO campus lapsed last May after former president Rodrigo Duterte stepped down on June 30 without signing the bill together with 25 other bills.

Thus, the bill is now Republic Act 11782 or the "Act Establishing a Campus of PMMA in Cagayan de Oro City" from May 29, 2022.

The PMMA under Superintendent Commodore Joel Abutal is now busy drafting the implementing rules and regulations of the law, which is expected to come out after 60 days. He is also scouting for people to form the team that will prepare the groundwork for setting up the new campus in Mindanao.

"The first thing is to organize the team, conduct an ocular [inspection] and identify prospective facilities there [Cagayan de Oro]," Capt. Reynold Sabay, acting assistant superintendent for Academic, Training, Research and Extension, said in English and Filipino.

"We are starting by identifying the most competent campus administrator. Superintendent [Abutal] will still be the point man, as of this time, unless he designated another project team leader," Sabay continued.

He added that the preference for the campus administrator is someone from PMMA and an alumnus.

The PMMA-CDO campus will not have a separate charter, however. The governing body will still be the PMMA Board of Trustees under the chairman, Commissioner Dr. Ronald Adamat of the Commission on Higher Education.

The law provides that its budget will come from the General Appropriations Act, not from the PMMA budget, but the law did not mention any amount for setting up the new campus, which Sabay estimated could reach up to P500 million since it would start practically from scratch.

"The mandate of the Cagayan de Oro campus is to offer short courses, technical-vocational (tech-voc) courses, undergraduate programs and eventually, post-graduate courses," he said.

The PMMA official assumed that these short courses mean STCW (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers) mandatory courses which are "in-sync already with tech-voc [education]," he pointed out.

Sabay, however, was quick to emphasize the need for resources.

"Before it can be started, the budget should be released [first]. The best scenario, if there are still no available facilities, we shall rent first to get the programs going.... We can lease first a property that is available. If there's none, that's the time na we'll propose [to construct new buildings]."

In all likelihood, Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, the staunch proponent of the law, will help PMMA in looking for the site of the new campus. He has been pushing for the passage of the bill since the time of the late Supt. Vice Admiral Richard Ritual.

Nevertheless, Captain Sabay, who has extensive experience in maritime education and training, underscored the goal of setting up the PMMA-CDO campus.

"Our No. 1 target is the employability of the course product of the Cagayan de Oro campus; it should be high, 100 percent, because our proposal is that all our students are scholars."

It is not exclusive to Mindanao; it will cater to students from anywhere in the Philippines, but most students are likely to come from the Visayas and Mindanao.

Once fully operational, the PMMA-CDO campus is expected to have a significant economic contribution to the Southern Philippines in terms of employment opportunities for people in the south.

"The new campus will become a locator; it will put Cagayan de Oro City into the world map since we will market its graduates to global shipping," Sabay projected.