DOTr's Bautista gets CA panel approval
MANILA, Philippines — Department of Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista hurdled the Commission on Appointments' Transportation Committee on Tuesday.
This came after the Commission on Appointments hearing on his ad interim appointment Tuesday morning, where Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, who also sits as CA chairman, endorsed the approval of the appointment of Bautista at the committee level.
"Here's a fellow that doesn't need to go through the learning curve... We need him to focus on his job," Zubiri said as he vouched for President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s pick for the position.
"Even when he is sleeping, he thinks of the transport problem of the country and we need him right now because of the traffic jams, because of the traffic congestion because of the Christmas season."
Bautista, president and chief operating officer of the flag carrier from 2004 to 2019, is inheriting a transport situation that both commuters and transport workers alike say is in crisis, with wanting transport capacity on the roads only exacerbated by skyrocketing fuel prices.
According to a 2018 study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Philippines stands to lose about P3.5 billion a day if traffic congestion along national highways remains unaddressed.
Service contracting, subsidies
Asked by Sen. Risa Hontiveros about the lack of public transport supply on the roads, Bautista said that more service contracting funds will still be needed heading into 2023.
The Libreng Sakay along the EDSA Carousel Busway funded by the Service Contracting Program is set to end this December, though Bautista said the DOTr was looking to replicate the dedicated lane in other congested highways in the Metro.
"I think we need more dedicated lanes. The EDSA Carousel, we saw that the result was good, and we in the Road Sector are talking about the possibility of having dedicated lanes in major thoroughfares like Quezon Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue, the wide roads in Metro Manila," Bautista said.
Bautista said that the agency intends to complete its payout of subsidies to some 600,000 tricycle drivers nationwide until January 15, 2023.
“When I assumed office, we started paying the fuel subsidy of the tricycle drivers, and in the first few weeks that we implemented this, we were able to pay around 6,000 of them,” Bautista said.
READ: LTFRB to probe reports of EDSA Carousel buses charging fares despite 'Libreng Sakay'
Long-term 'master plan'
Bautista also told the panel that he already told the major contractors of big-ticket infrastructure projects that they need to complete the Metro Manila Subway and the North-South Commuter Railway on time. Both projects are slated for partial operations by 2028.
He also expressed support for the institutionalization of a long-term plan for the country's public transport system across administrations.
According to Sen. JV Ejercito, such a plan should cover several areas of development, like transportation and logistics, energy, water resources, information and communications technology, social infrastructure, agri-fisheries modernization and food logistics, and asset preservation and maintenance strategies.
"There really needs to be long-term planning. There are countries that actually plan up to 50 years [...] Here in our country, we really need to plan all our infrastructure projects for airports, for railways, for ports, for roads and bridges," he said in mixed Filipino and English.
"We will tell the President that we need to really do a long-term planning for all our infrastructure projects," he added.
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