Card system

With the way the so-called card system has been hotly debated in the Sanggunian floors during its two hearings last week, one immediately senses that the Public Order and Safety Office (Poso) will have a hard time convincing a “small but noisy” group of drivers and operators to give the traffic reduction scheme a chance.

While most of the jeepney associations (25 out of 29, Poso figure) had nothing but praises for the card system, downtown loop drivers did not like it because they said it has substantially reduced their daily earnings, encouraged drivers to gamble while waiting for their turns, and greatly inconvenienced their passengers.

Downtown’s position was valid: they are a loop service and their trips have no fixed beginnings and ends. Or as a driver had aptly put it, they are not vice-versa, no definite origins and destinations. Meaning, if you put them under a card system, where they are to ply the downtown loop by intervals, it would be to the great inconvenience and disadvantage of the commuters because they would be made to transfer everytime a downtown loop jeepney approaches its holding area and stops there to pass his card.

But the most telling during last week’s two committee hearings were the drivers’ complaints that under the card system, they are being made to pay P5 to P10 by their associations everytime they leave their holding areas, making some city councilors wonder where these money go. This fee is separate from the monthly dues that are collected from them.

One jeepney association president, obviously after summoning enough courage, explained --after a driver angrily raised the issue-- that they needed to collect fees to raise money for the salaries of dispatchers they have employed in their holding areas. Another one said the same. Others chose to be silent.

But by simple arithmetic, the money being collected everyday from the drivers is a lot more than what is needed for the daily salaries, prompting City Councilor Farah Decano to ask if the associations are renting their holding areas, or the excess money will be used as a provident fund to benefit their member-drivers.

There’s really nothing wrong with collecting fees as long as these are reasonable and there’s transparency on how these fees are spent. Certainly, any driver, who was properly consulted about the fees and who knows why these are being collected, would not raise a howl and make a big fuss about it.

While this is an internal problem among jeepney associations, authorities should now step in quick to settle it before it is blown out of proportions; before names are dragged to be benefiting from it.

We don’t want the card system to be called a “quick-buck scheme,” do we?

ENDNOTES: We are saddened with the death last week of Dr. Marcela T. Velasco, 78, mother of Mel, a comrade-in-arms in journalism and a dear friend. Please accept our deepest condolences, pare. Also last week, Benjie Villa of Tarlac City, a former colleague in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star, died at the age of 31. I first met Benjie during a PDI bureau conference in Munoz City in 1997, barely a year after his graduation from the Tarlac State University. I remember him as a chubby little young man who was soft-spoken but serious. We would again see each other later when both of us moved to the Star. To Benjie, goodbye, pare.

QUICK QUOTE: The human heart feels things the eyes cannot see, and knows what the mind cannot understand. -- Robert Vallett