Romualdez thanks SMHC for bigger OFW lounge at Naia

MANILA, Philippines — San Miguel Holdings Corp. (SMC) will provide a bigger resting lounge for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) at Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) in Pasay City.

In a statement on Thursday, House Speaker Martin Romualdez expressed his gratitude to the consortium, led by SMC chief executive officer Ramon Ang, for the initiative, noting that the OFW lounge haD so far served approximately 75,000 OFWs — or about 2,000 daily.

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“We can see here in Terminal 3 an OFW lounge similar to the one we have in Terminal 1. That one is very nice but already full to the brim. Since there are more passengers in T3, we are very grateful to Mr. Ramon Ang and ma’am Cecille [Ang’s daughter] for accommodating not only the OFW lounge, here but they want to provide a larger space that’s almost double the area” Romualdez said.

“They [SMC] wanted to allocate a bigger space because they felt the original site was too small. So we expect this OFW Lounge to have better and nicer operations in Naia,” he added in Filipino.

The lawmaker disclosed that the expanded OFW lounge is slated to operate by the end of June this year and is expected to accommodate around 200 migrant workers.

The initiative — under the public-private partnership program, which is aimed at the rehabilitation and operation of Naia — was bagged by the SMC consortium along with RMM Asian Logistics, Inc., RLW Aviation Development, Inc., and Incheon International Airport Corp.

According to Romualdez, the SMC-led group is expected to improve the Naia complex, including “the runway, taxiway, ramp areas, and firefighting facility to increase the airport’s current annual passenger capacity from 32 million to 60 million.”