EDITORIAL - Overloaded

How do you squeeze 52 passengers into a jeepney designed for just 22 people plus a driver? Silly question. Put passengers on the roof, of course, and make others sit on the narrow aisle and the step. In between the passengers, there’s sure to be enough room for baskets of crops, chickens and sundry items.

Jeepneys, buses and tricycles packed with passengers and cargo have become tourist attractions all over the country. It’s not unusual to see even schoolchildren hanging on to the backs of jeepneys and tricycles while others sit on the roof. Obviously the quaint scenes are also dangerous. In Abra last Saturday night, a jeepney with 52 passengers fell into a ditch. While the ditch was only a meter deep, passengers in the overloaded jeepney were crushed. Five of the passengers died, two of them children, while several others were seriously injured.

The accident came on the heels of a bus accident last Friday also in the Cordilleras. As of last count, 17 of the passengers of the Bontoc-bound Florida Trans bus had died. Survivors said the bus was negotiating a steep stretch along the narrow mountain road when it plunged into a ravine.

Buses and jeepneys, no matter how old or overloaded, remain popular among the millions of Filipinos who have no choice but to take cheap mass transportation. The passengers of the jeepney in Abra were beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer program for the very poor, and were on their way home from a meeting with personnel of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. The safety of impoverished commuters is rarely considered by mass transport operators.

The same disregard for public safety is evident in maritime transportation. In several areas in this archipelago, ferries and outriggers are often the only means of inter-island transportation. Like jeepneys and buses, the boats are often overloaded and poorly maintained, and their passenger manifests are rarely accurate.

President Aquino has reportedly set a meeting with officials of transportation agencies to discuss the safety of the riding public. The poor are not the only victims of this cavalier attitude toward public safety. Foreign visitors often take ordinary mass transportation either for the experience or because they have no choice. In the bus accident in Bontoc, two of the fatalities were foreigners.

If the administration is still keen on luring 10 million foreign tourists by 2016, it should improve regulation of mass transportation. Even more important than promoting tourism, however, is making all modes of public transportation safe for everyone, Filipinos and foreign guests alike. Cheap transportation should not mean cheapening life.