Transport strike hits Angeles City

ANGELES CITY – A bigger week-long transport strike, scheduled to begin midnight yesterday, is expected to paralyze businesses here and at Clark Field.

Drivers plying the Bamban, Concepcion and Capas (Tarlac) and Mabalacat, Magalang and Arayat (Pampanga) routes to this city are staging the strike to protest the traffic rerouting plan of Mayor Carmelo Lazatin.

Two weeks ago, a transport strike, staged mostly by drivers from Mabalacat and Magalang, triggered a business slump here and forced big universities and other schools to suspend classes.

The strike, which also lasted a week, ended after Lazatin assured the drivers that the rerouting plan for public utility vehicles was merely experimental and would be scrapped if found ineffective in solving traffic congestion in the city. – Ding Cervantes