Gov’t mulls lifting all truck bans in Metro

MANILA, Philippines - The government is looking into the proposal of stakeholders to lift all truck bans throughout Metro Manila.

Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said that’s what they discussed as part of the long-term solution to the port congestion in Manila during the Senate committee on trade, commerce and entrepreneurship  public hearings on port congestion last Thursday.

The head of the cabinet cluster tackling port congestion said the “ban all bans” can happen if a truck dispatch system is put in place.

“In order for truck dispatch system to work, we need to put the whole loop together with trucker and container yard,” he said. “It’s not only the port operator which needs to have the system.”

Almendras said truckers must put into the system a mechanism in which trucks can be tracked.

“This can only be done if we are also able to have integration with the container yards,” he said.

Michael Raeuber, European Chamber of Commerce president, broached the idea of “ban all bans” during the Senate hearing.

“Do away with the ban as much as possible,” he said. “We also do not really subscribe that the daytime truck ban imposed by the City of Manila really started it all. We believe it went back a little bit further in the past.” 

Raeuber said the one-hour expansion of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) truck ban was one of the  reasons for the port congestion.

“This one-hour expansion seems very innocent but what is one hour in the morning and what is one hour in the evening. But in reality, it disrupted the cycle times,” he said.

“It took out almost 50 percent of the productivity of trucks. That is what started it, followed by the Christmas truck ban for a couple of hours, which led to another buildup of vehicles. Then the daytime truck ban, that is when everything really went very bad.”