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Piston said fuel prices and maintenance costs have become significantly higher than in October 2023, when current fares were set, widening the gap between operating expenses and daily earnings.
“Without price controls and the repeal of deregulation policies, these measures merely create an illusion of control."
Absence of concrete price control mechanisms leaves transport workers, farmers, fisherfolk, and low-income households vulnerable to what it described as “war-driven oil shock."
Urban poor, workers, women, and other marginalized groups bear the brunt of the effects of oil price hikes amid inadequate support from the government.
Without government intervention, public utility drivers will continue to bear the brunt of rising fuel prices as their daily earnings steadily decline.
“These vehicles are the drivers’ sole means of livelihood. Impounding them is not just a form of harassment, it is economic punishment.”
"We stand with Ka Mody. He is the defender of the transport sector. I am always with him. We joke with him, eat with him, and he's with us on the road."
Since its launch in June 2017, several groups have continuously protested against the government's public transport modernization program (PTMP). In Cagayan de Oro, a few jeepney operators were forced to sell their units, losing interest in the program.
"If the LTFRB only knows about extensions, what’s stopping the government from just scrapping the whole program instead of repeatedly deceiving and playing us around?”
“This recent development serves as irrefutable proof that the people's collective power can shake even the Senate,” said Mody Floranda, national president of jeepney drivers group Piston.
After six years of the government’s program to phase out jeepneys, thousands of drivers and operators are still feeling the cruel punishment.
They had no income for two months and received no aid from government. When they held a protest demanding government to allow them to earn a living, they were arrested and detained.
The transport movement argued that the old jeepneys must not be sidelined when there is an obvious increase in demand due to the reduced passengers of other PUVs for physical distancing.
Marklen Maojo Maga, 39, was arrested by policemen in plainclothes at around 8:40 a.m. after he brought his son to school. It was only in the evening that his family and lawyers confirmed that he is being held at the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group compound in Camp Crame.
The apprehensions and the stiff fines have prompted operators to temporarily sideline their jeepneys, resulting in reduced number of jeepneys plying the streets thereby creating more difficulties for commuters.
“Corporations, which are by nature expected to recover the cost of their expenses and liabilities can raise the minimum fare without a public hearing.”
“The police wanted to make a statement and terrorize the people especially those critical of government programs such as the bogus jeepney modernization.”
“We welcome and appreciate the effort of Sen. Grace Poe. That’s what we want to hear from the government.”
“Aside from unilaterally revising the law and reinterpreting it to suit one's draconian fetishes, to label legitimate and legal people's actions is a foreboding of worse things to come,” the NUPL said.
MANILA -- Various jeepney routes in Metro Manila and major roads in the provinces nationwide were almost hundred percent clear of public utility jeepneys on October 16 and 17, during the two-day transport strike. Piston estimated the participation in the strike was...
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