Horrors! They are implementing the law!

Something horrible is happening at the North Luzon Expressway (NLE). They are implementing safety related laws that was passed by our Congress some years ago. In fact, they are collecting and turning over to the Land Transportation Office, about a million and a half pesos a month in fines because they are implementing various traffic laws. Those guys running the NLE must really think they can get away with something as un-Filipino has taking our laws seriously.

Not long after they took over the tollway from government-owned PNCC, they started getting complaints from VIPs because the NLE patrol officers were citing drivers for going over the speed limit, among other violations, including overloading. Congressmen and mayors and assorted local big shots threatened NLE management with investigations and other bureaucratic mayhem if they continued running the NLE like any world-class tollway is supposed to be managed.

One such official who was caught speeding over the limit in his German luxury car complained that it was senseless to build such a nice highway and not let drivers enjoy it. Still, other drivers had to be cited for driving unsafe vehicles or for not knowing the rules of the road. One such driver even wrote to thank the tollway management for letting him know that the leftmost lane is essentially for overtaking and slow moving vehicles should keep to the right.

Last week, truck drivers and operators tried to sabotage traffic flow in the tollway as they protested the gall of NLE management in implementing Republic Act 8794, which limits the loads of cargo vehicles and sets down penalties for overloading. The truckers were filled with righteous indignation, because they said, in the entire country, it is only the NLE that is implementing the overloading law along its 85 km stretch.

And with the help of some local officials, they tried to get Malacañang to intercede. The truckers insisted that the law should be ignored. That’s good reasoning. Just because a law was ignored because the agencies that should implement it – the Land Transportation Office and the Philippine National Police – we should all act as if the law doesn’t exist.

In fact, LTO itself estimates that 85 percent of all cargo trucks are overloaded – a fact that the truckers do not dispute. One can only imagine that the law was not being ignored for free… in all likelihood, alternative fines are being collected by law enforcement officers at rates lower than the fines set by RA 8794. What’s so strange about that? This is the Pilipins.

And RA 8794 is not that strange. It is even generous, compared to similar laws abroad. The maximum permissible truck load that the law sets for local trucks is 13.5 tons per axle, the highest limit anywhere in the world. By comparison, US trucks have a load limit per axle of 9.1 tons. The European Union has a recommended limit of 11.5 tons. The next-highest is France, with a limit to 12 tons per axle. In fact, before RA 8794 was passed in 2002, RA 4136 (passed in 1965) set the maximum load limit for cargo vehicles at a much lighter eight tons per axle.

Why is the law’s implementation so important? Overloading has been blamed by the UP National Center of Transportation Studies for 120,000 of the average of 970,000 road accidents that happen in a year. And road accidents, the same center says, cost P105.2 billion yearly, or 2.6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Overloading is also one of the reasons why our road network in this country is in constant need of repair. For the NLE, non implementation of the load limit would invalidate the guarantee of the foreign construction company that built it. Safety in the tollway would also be seriously compromised.

Oh well… sooner rather than later, we have to stop thinking in terms of the usual chaotic lawlessness that is typical of our streets. And if the NLE is teaching our motorists to respect our laws, all I can say is, it certainly is just about time.

Tourism

I got this e-mail reacting to our columns on tourism.

Dear Boo, You are my favorite columnist, that I always look forward to reading every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I am "Tito" Primicias, a former Congressman and Governor of Pangasinan, whom you may possibly not remember, because perhaps you weren’t yet born or grown then.  Anyway, being an inveterate tourist, let me put in my two centavos’ worth regarding our local tourism.

I strongly suspect that one reason our tourism industry is floundering while we have even better attractions than our booming neighbors, is that no one among our tourism Secretaries has ever been a tourist.  True, they often take trips abroad and such, but in an official capacity, where they are met and received by our foreign service, and treated to official receptions, dinners and what-have-you.  Never as plain tourists.

For example, how many of them have ever traveled as an ordinary person, on an ordinary passport, whether as a backpacker, group tourist, or just sole adventurer?  Your guess is as good as mine.

As long as from around 50 years ago to the present, all arrivals at Hong Kong and Tokyo would be met by racks of information magazines, all for free, detailing suggestions on where to stay, what to do, where to go, what to see, what and where to shop, etc.  We don’t have this, except in our top hotels and aimed only at the better-heeled.

Even for our primary tourist attraction Boracay, now being advertised abroad only by word-of-mouth, the best way for the upscale people to reach it is by small plane to Caticlan, then from there by tricycle, to the boat boarding to the island, embarking and disembarking impossible for the elderly and handicapped. Just to improve this would be simple and cheap.

Look at the travel brochures circulating among travel agencies in the USA, Canada and Europe.  Tours are available covering all of our neighboring countries, even Laos, Vietnam and Burma, but pointedly exclude the Philippines.  What is being done with our exorbitant travel tax?

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  Keep it up in your column.  All the best.  

Like animals

Last Saturday evening, CNN carried an interview of two British journalists from ITN relating their experience covering the story about children in Philippine prisons. In the video they showed, taken with the use of a secret camera, children are being treated like animals in cages (their words). The reporters said it was their second visit and they hardly saw any improvement despite an official Philippine government statement of concern.

I found this ironic. Just last week an undersecretary of DILG made this statement about poor people being treated like animals in relation to the Ultra stampede. Yet, Ultra was clearly an accident. The situation with the children being kept in prisons like "animals in cages" is a continuing thing. I understand these prisons are under local government units and manned by the PNP, both under the DILG’s supervision.

No wonder the Usec found it easy to talk the way he did. He had first hand knowledge of humans being treated like animals. His department is most guilty of it… embarrassing the country internationally, in the process. As I listened to the British reporters in that CNN program, I found it hard to take that they were talking about my country.

Lonely hearts ad

In a Valentine mood, reader Norbert Goldie sent in this lonely hearts ad.

This has to be one of the best singles ads ever printed. It is reported to have been listed in the Atlanta Journal.

SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant.  I’m a very good girl who LOVES to play.  I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire.  Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand.  I’ll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me.  Call (404) 875-6420 and ask for Daisy, I’ll be waiting...

Response to ad: Over 15,000 men found themselves talking to the Atlanta Humane Society about an eight-week-old black Labrador retriever.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]