Survival modes

Uriel C. Quilinguing .

PUSHED to the wall, creative juices could be summoned and possibilities explored if only to be temporarily free, wishing the world will be kind this time around.

For the past week, taxicabs operating illegally was the talk-of-the-town in Cagayan de Oro’s transport sector while the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board regional office 10 seemed to be on the chopping board for tolerating the existence of colorum vehicles for too long. Were it not for Councilor Roger Abaday’s privilege speech in the City Council, the operation of colorum taxicabs could have become the new normal. 

LTFRB-10 regional director Aminodin Guro was quick to the draw, saying he would create an inter-agency task force to assist his office to run after illegal operation of taxicabs. Aside from the LTFRB, the said task force would be composed of representatives from the Land Transportation Office, Philippine National Police-Highway Patrol Group, Cagayan de Oro City Police Office and, the City Hall’s Roads and Traffic Administration.

In effect, Guro has absolved himself from any accountability and presumptuously assumed an authority over law enforcers from other agencies that would compose the task force he would create. Perhaps he is unaware this would require a memorandum of agreement among the heads of agencies to be involved in combating the operation of colorum taxicabs. 

In fact, Abaday, in an interview in ABS-CBN North Mindanao’s Pamahaw Especial Tuesday,said the City Council has passed a resolution that requested the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board Central Office to create an inter-agency task force to combat colorum taxicabs.   

He said he has also sponsored an ordinance that would prohibit the operation of colorum public utility vehicles in the city, adding the same should be integrated into the city’s traffic integrated plan. 

Meantime, Guro focused on some 2,770 taxicabs belonging to operators with franchises by inspecting these units for an inventory of franchises or “tagging operation” for three days and “counter-checking” if the body numbers which the LTFRB gave are still being used. 

After three days, everything appears to be in order. Since the LTFRB-10 publicized the “tagging operation,” it also has the responsibility to informed the public of the result of the three-day inventory of franchises issued to operators. 

Instead, the LTFRB-10 announced it “has granted and issued provisional authority to 60 units of the Bugo Taxi Operators and Drivers Inc. (Butodi)” to legitimize the illegal operation of taxicabs. The agency’s press statement claimed that Butodi is “a corporation that applied for an extension of validity with substitution of units and consolidation of cases of its Certificate of Public Convenience under MC 2018-010 filed on July 10, 2019.”

With this, we expect Butodi has documentary requirements that include its registration with the Board of Investments, business trade name registration with the Department of Trade and Industry, business permit and proof that the application was subjected to a public hearing. 

Now, all taxicabs that have been operating illegally—numbering about 3,000, according to City Councilor Abaday—have a way out. 

With this, Mediakonek wonders why that task force should still be created when colorum taxicabs no longer exist, by then, due to Guro’s maneuvering of an LTFRB memorandum circular. The provisional authority has Nov. 23, 2019, to June 30, 2019, as its validity. 

By then, all Butodi units must comply with the Omnibus Franchising Guidelines (OFG) set under LTFRB Memorandum Circular 2017-011, Board’s Memorandum Circular 2018-008 and Consolidation of Franchise Holders in compliance with Department Order No. 2017-011. 

While the LTFRB-10 has its hands full in the process of legitimizing illegal operation of taxicabs, several operators of taxicabs in the city have seriously been considering strategies so that they could send all their units to the streets and sustain their businesses afloat. 

For more than a year, most drivers of legitimate taxi operators could not remit the daily boundary, ranging from P800 to P1,000 due to high fuel prices, traffic jams, and high taxi density in the city, hence many units are idle.                

A Mediakoneksource said taxi operators, whose units have already been fully paid, under a financial scheme in banks, may be compelled to bring down the daily boundary to P500 to ease the remittance burden and make sure most, if not all, of their units, would be on the street.

Clearly, survival modes prevail among the stakeholders of the taxi industry. These can be physical, emotional, mental and practical for taxi drivers, taxi operators, ghost taxi investors, and even LTFRB-10 personnel. 

God knows whether they are generating fares just enough to keep business going and, to stay afloat, they have to let many other important areas of business slip by the wayside just to have the resources to stay above water.

(Uriel C. Quilinguing is a former president of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club who, for more than three decades, had been editor in chief of Cagayan de Oro-based newspapers, including this paper. For reactions, email them to uriel.quilinguing@yahoo.com.)