MANILA, Philippines — Lawmakers urged the House of Representatives to investigate allegations of illegal dismissal and salaries delayed for years of the bus drivers along the EDSA busway carousel.
In filing House Resolution No. 52, representatives of the progressive Makabayan bloc pointed out that affected drivers have reported only receiving 23% of the funding allocated for the transportation department's service contracts behind the Libreng Sakay program.
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Under LTFRB Memorandum Circular 2021-029, 30% of the P7 billion funding for the service contracting program is for drivers and conductors while the remaining 70% is for the operator and daily fuel and maintenance of vehicles.
"Transport workers under the ES Consortium and the Mega Manila Consortium, which operate the buses that ply the EDSA bus carousel, have experienced abuse at the hands of their former employers and lack of reprieve from the government," the resolution reads.
"Apart from delayed payment of salary, EDSA carousel bus drivers and conductors were also forced to travel from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m., a total of almost 18 to 21 hours [of] work per day."
To recall, in late April of this year, former drivers along the carousel told of harsh restrictions on riders who were growing increasingly dissatisfied with what they said was their delayed pay. Since May 2021, they said, they had not been paid.
A number of the busway's drivers took the LTFRB to protest and were immediately dismissed on the pretext that the company was already bankrupt. The ones that stayed have also had to carry the costs of fuel amid the skyrocketing diesel prices.
Speaking in an interview aired over DZBB Super Radyo earlier Tuesday, LTFRB chair Cheloy Garafil said that the delayed payment was one of the issues raised in the LTFRB's recent meeting with Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista.
"Give us until the end of the month to fix the payout issues," she said in mixed Filipino and English.
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"Based on our record, only more than 200 buses are deployed on the busway during rush hour from the 440 buses that are supposed to be running here," Garafil also said in an earlier statement Monday.
Garafil also told reporters that she and Bautista discovered weeks of backlog and unpaid dues when they entered the office.
This, despite previous LTFRB executive director Tina Cassion claiming in June that the LTFRB "already paid what we are obliged to pay" of the P7 billion earmarked for service contracts.
Cassion in an earlier interview with ABS-CBN News Channel went on to claim that no formal complaints were filed by the drivers themselves. In the same breath, she tagged the situation as an employer-employee issue which she said would be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor and Employment.
READ: LTFRB says no complaints filed by drivers in ‘Libreng Sakay’ pay dispute
"We also need to restore their old routes so they can continue riding again," Garafil also said when asked about the well-documented commuter crisis as of late. But as of now, she said, there was "still no definite policy" on the previous LTFRB's move to ban provincial buses along EDSA.
In a statement sent to Philstar.com later Tuesday, the National Federation of Labor said it welcomed House lawmakers' move to probe labor abuses along the EDSA busway.
"Until now, the case of EDSA Carousel transport workers is still being heard by the Department of Labor and Employment," the statement reads in Filipino.
"Since entering the Free Ride Program in May 2021, until now, workers have not received their full wages. According to the ES Transport-NFL Workers' Bond, the combined amount of wages that are not paid to drivers and conductors is about P20-million."
— with reports from Xave Gregorio