Productive uses for road users’ tax

Congressmen are like mice lured by a Pied Piper. Watch how they mindlessly follow the House leaders on the Road Board issue.

Last May they already passed a bill of then-Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez to abolish the agency. President Duterte had so requested due to its corruption. The bill was relayed to the Senate where a parallel measure was being crafted. Meantime in July came a House leadership coup by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo; the supermajority swiftly switched sides. On Sept. 12 the senators got wind of a plan by the new House leaders to recall the abolition. Belatedly, it seemed, the congressmen had thought to divvy up the Road Board’s remaining P45 billion for Election 2019. To avert it the senators adopted the House version as is, and thus preclude the need for a bicameral conference committee. That afternoon, the House pied pipers did get the congressmen-mice to vote to recall their bill. That bill purportedly was a farce, claimed Majority Leader Rolando Andaya; nowhere in it supposedly was the word “abolish” stated. Yet at the top of the first page was the title, “An Act Abolishing the Road Board and Amending for the Purpose Republic Act 8794”. Andaya further alleged that Duterte didn’t really want it dissolved.

Duterte consequently declared he did want abolition, and that Andaya got it all wrong. Whereupon, Andaya called for the convening of a conference committee to reconcile the conflicting Senate and House versions. Yet there were no conflicts since the Senate had adopted the House version.

Andaya is now in a predicament. On record is the Sept. 12 House vote to stop the abolition. Yet, to please Duterte, he must go through the motions of reconciling with the Senate. He will then return to the House with the very original abolition measure that he got the mice to rescind. He will make them ratify that vomited original. Watch the mice shamelessly swallow.

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Had sleaze not spoiled it, the road users’ tax was a novel idea. From that doubling of vehicle registration fees would come road-safety projects. Those include graveling of road ruts; fixing of shoulders and sidewalks; and installation of traffic lights, street lamps, directional and cautionary signs, cat’s eyes, lane designations, speed bumps, highway railings, emergency phone booths, pollution indicators, emission controls, and the like.

But the Road Board that administers the tax fell into the hands of rascals. It doled equal lump sums of P15 million a year to lawmakers, governors, and city mayors. The politicos chose their own projects and contractors, from whom they took 30- to 55-percent kickbacks. It became exactly what the Supreme Court defined as pork barrels that it outlawed in 2013. Meanwhile the Road Board bosses took huge kickbacks too from projects that it oversaw in multiple congressional districts. Billions of pesos went to one bureaucrat’s love nest alone.

Now, in having the Board scrapped, Duterte wants the road users’ tax to be placed alongside other revenue collections. Visiting landslide victims in Bicol last week, he said he’d just use the tax for disaster mitigation.

His advisers should talk Duterte out of it. There are other sources of disaster relief funds, including no other than the President’s Social Fund from the charity sweepstakes.

The road users’ tax should remain for road safety. Each day 35 Filipinos die in road crashes, 25 of them on motorcycles; Metro Manila alone has 25 serious road accidents a day. There’s dire need for road-safety facilities.

 Such facilities can even boost industry. If the government commits to spend the yearly road tax collections on safety features, industrialists and technologists would be encouraged to manufacture the facilities. For instance, the Land Transportation Office has only 1,005 breath analyzers to check on-the-spot alcohol levels of drunk drivers. The authorities need tens of thousands of those gadgets nationwide. Using the road tax, procurement can be for Philippine-made versions.

Direly needed too are thousands of kilometers of sturdy highway lampposts, railings, and signs. Again procurement can be from Filipino steelworks. Same with hand-held electronic tailpipe emission detectors and pollution-level alarms. Filipino tech companies would get much-needed shots in the arm. Employment would be boosted, as roads are made safer, cleaner.

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