An infrastructure-oriented thinktank slammed Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade for pushing his agency’s jeepney modernization program despite the coronavirus pandemic.
“The overarching public concern during the general community quarantine is to restart the productivity of Filipino families and unburden the government from the heavy costs of a social amelioration program. Insisting on jeepney modernization at this time is nothing but callous and tonedeaf leadership from the country’s transport chief.”
This was the statement of Terry Ridon, Infrawatch PH convenor and former House transportation committee member.
Modernization can wait
Ridon, who opposed the jeepney modernization as President Rodrigo Duterte’s former urban poor chief, said that jeepney modernization can wait after the pandemic is over.
“The concerns on roadworthiness has always been there, way before the pandemic. But why is Mr. Tugade is using this as a monkey wrench to deprive jeepney-dependent families of much needed income to tide them over until the end of the crisis?”
Ridon said given diminished incomes around the country, jeepney modernization will be unviable at this time.
“Nobody, even consolidated cooperatives, will deem it wise to undertake new, expensive loans until the binding coronavirus constraint is resolved. Who will take on new units if these will be deemed non-compliant with health protocols in the future? Correspondingly, how will they pay the loans?”
Allow jeepneys but respecting social distancing protocols
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“Mr. Tugade makes much about the difficulty in enforcing social distancing in jeepneys. But there are very recent studies that closed environments facilitate secondary transmission of COVID-19, yet transport agencies allowed the operation of trains, TNVS and P2P buses. These are obviously closed environments. Ano ba talaga kuya?”
READ: Closed environments facilitate secondary transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Link: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20029272v2
Duterte should intervene
Ridon said the President should now intervene to stop transport agencies from further wreaking havoc on the lives of jeepney-dependent families.
“Senator Nancy Binay is correct. Every day jeepney drivers fail to ply their routes, two-hundred fifty thousand families go hungry. And is there available social protection for them this June? There is none: the SAP has been sapped.”
Ridon said these transport policies has left the general public is literally on the road.
“Ultimately, it is the general public that is burdened by tonedeaf transport policies. We cannot expect them to earn a decent wage and live a decent life if they have to walk for hours on end to and from their workplaces and operate their machines for eight to ten hours. Mahiya naman tayo sa mga tao.”