Manila: Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo and two others remained missing when a light four-seater plane crashed off Masbate City in central Philippines at past three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, said his aide who survived the incident after jumping from the plane before it fell into the sea.

Robredo’s aide, Don Abresado, was rescued by fishermen off Ibingay village. Although he sustained injuries, he joined the search and rescue operation.

The plane’s pilot, Capt Jesop Valentin, also the owner of the ill-fated plane, a twin-engine Piper Senica, was about to make an emergency landing at the Masbate airport, Abresado was quoted as telling members of a search and rescue team.

He also said that he was seated near the plane’s door; managed to take off his seat belt, and succeeded in opening the door which allowed him to jump into the sea.

Abresado was eventually brought to a hospital because of a fractured shoulder and arms.

Meanwhile, a friend of the Robredo family hinted in another radio interview from Naga that the secretary was rescued by fishermen.

But Capt Jesop Valentin said in the same radio interview that only Robredo’s aide was rescued by fishermen.

Friends and classmates of Robredo’s wife, Maria Leonor Gerona, held a prayer vigil at Robredo’s residence in Naga. His three children, Aika, Patricia and Jillian Therese, were very sad, a family friend said in a radio interview.

“We were together in Cebu City [in central Philippines] at one in the afternoon. At past two in the afternoon. Secretary Robredo told me that he would proceed to Naga in Bicol [southern Luzon]. His plane took off at three in the afternoon,” Interior and Local Government Undersecretary Ricardo Puno said in a radio interview.

“Then Secretary Robredo and his aide talked to us on their mobile phones. They said their plane had an engine problem,” said Puno, adding the pilot’s plan was to make an emergency landing at nearby Masbate.

The plane’s co-pilot was identified as a Nepalese.

The plane and the passengers were not found at the scene of the plane crash.

Authorities ended the search and rescue operation at past six o’clock.

President Benigno Aquino scheduled a trip to Robredo’s family in Naga on Sunday.

For Robredo’s safety, prayer vigils were also held at the La Salle, Greenhills in suburban San Juan, and at the EDSA Shrine along Epifanio de los Santos.

For the past three weeks, Robredo remained busy because of the continuous monsoon-triggered rains that devastated almost all of the Philippines.

Robredo, 54, has been identified as a close friend of President Aquino.

In 1988, at 29, he was elected Mayor of Naga City in Camarines Sur. In 2000, at age 42, he received the Ramon Magsaysay award, equivalent of the Nobel Prize, for good government service, and for encouraging people’s participation in governance, During his watch, Naga became one of the country’s “most improved cities in Asia,” Asiaweek’s citation said in 1999.

He was an Edward Mason Fellow and a graduate in Public Administration at John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachussets in 1999. He finished his masters in Business Administration at the premier University of the Philippines in 1985. He had two undergraduate degrees, Industrial Management engineering and Mechanical Engineering, at the De la Salle University.