Made to order

Congratulations to Secretary Leila De Lima and her multi-agency task force for showing us why crime really pays and jailbirds sing the blues. We’ve always known that there was something fishy going on in the state penitentiary, but who would have guessed that it was from a jacuzzi and dirty money. All pun aside, I say it again: Congratulations Madame Secretary for a raid well done. Now for your next challenge: Line up the corrupt BuCor officials and the protector-facilitators and political patrons of the crime bosses.

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The Philippine Post Office and the Bureau of Customs seriously need to meet about their public information needs.

I have been reading and receiving several complaints from people who got the shock of their lives when they went to the post office to claim parcels or small items sent by relatives or ordered through the internet. In at least 3 cases, the addressee or claimant were charged about 2 to 4 times the value of the goods as tax. I had a similar experience many years ago when someone sent me a roll of lights as a Christmas present but ended up being taxed for P15,000 . My wife recently got a free catalog from Europe and the courier wanted P500! Ordinary people are clearly unaware of how things work at and between Philpost and the Bureau of Customs. The government offices are obviously just doing their jobs, but the job is not done well enough if the public you serve are not properly informed, educated and assisted from source to destination. Even shippers, forwarders and brokers are of no help and this is a situation that should not continue. Educating the public will also better introduce the bureaus and agencies to the people. 

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LTFRB Chairman Winston Ginez said a mouthful during interviews last week concerning steps to curb criminality among taxi drivers. The sad part of it all is that all he really did was give lip service to the public, pass the burden to taxi operators and ended up being the sole beneficiary in terms of publicity.

The criminality among taxi drivers has always been a sleeping monster that simply needed to cause harm in order to be recognized. To begin with we have long been criticizing and commenting about the abnormal, unlawful and dangerous practice of taxi drivers working 24 hour straight shifts. In order to stay awake and function, most cab drivers have been juicing up on power drinks spiked with sugar and amphetamine like substances. From power drinks they step up to what they call Sampung pisong bato or Shabu.

When you match drugs with addiction, desperate times such as the onset of Christmas plus the lack of controls or restriction, you will ultimately raise the demon’s spawn and they will rape and rob as they have been doing so. The problem is no one in the LTFRB is honest enough to admit or recognize the problem because no one in the Aquino Misadministration wants to be unpopular especially with “poor” taxi drivers.

Not only are they scared shitless of being unpopular and harassed by broadcast media they are also lazy slugs who won’t do the work required to establish a system similar to New York City’s Taxi Medallions. In NYC you don’t just get a driver’s license to be a cabbie, you need to have a “Medallion” that is the equivalent of a vehicle franchise. If the LTFRB were to adopt that, a Pinoy cab driver would have to submit every possible form of identification and contact details, would have to undergo specialized training even for tourist relations, First Aid, etc.

In other words the LTFRB now has the chance and the reason to PROFESSIONALIZE the ranks of cab drivers. Yes, it will have a price and it will cost money but why shouldn’t it? We all have to pay taxes, some have to take exams for licensure, and why not people we trust to take poor loved ones home. Perhaps when they know they can lose their expensive “Medallion” they might have second thoughts about being snobs and choosy drivers.

Ginez and the LTFRB can no longer take this matter for granted and it is something that we in media and the public in general need to keep badgering the LTFRB about. Start working and stop talking because lip service merely heightens our expectations.

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While everyone has been preoccupied with Christmas parties and shopping, one of Santa’s Elves slipped a note into my stocking to tip me off on reports and grumblings about a “draft resolution” soon to be pushed through the LTFRB that would facilitate a new type of taxi franchise. According to the Senior Elf, the resolution effectively provides for a new taxi franchise category specifically made for vehicles with 1 to 1.2 liter engine displacement. According to my source with the pointed ears, the LTFRB recently called in members of CAMPI or Association of Car Manufacturers in the Philippines to get their inputs.

Unbeknownst to the LTFRB official pushing for the new Taxi Category, some CAMPI members were suspicious since the technical provisions of the draft supposedly favors a very new and very controversial entry into the market whose product offerings fit the specs like they were made to order. On the side, it may not have occurred to the authors of the draft resolution that a 1 to 1.3 liter vehicle may die on the road as we have observed with a mini Japanese utility vehicle of 1.3 displacement used as taxis 2 years ago. In fact every time a taxi company books passengers they always ask if there’s a lot of baggage because their mini utility vehicles sputter under full loads.

The risk in using 1 to 1.3 liter vehicles is getting stuck on a chewing gum, not making it over a hump in Greenhills, or falling apart after 6 months. Some cars are made for puttering about not for sputtering to death.

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