No Stepping on the Brake

must also be reciprocated with creation and design - it should not slaughter the Filipino identity and heritage.

According to the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), one significant deterrent reason of drivers and operators is the steep price of new versions of jeepneys from the traditional cost of 600-700 thousand to modern type jeepneys of 1.62.4 million pesos. This high cost of transitioning and organizing pains the staggering ordinary drivers especially when they only based their income on the numbers of passengers. Aside from extremely cheap fares, only P1,000 or less exclusive of boundary, fuel and maintenance for over 16-18 exhausting hours per day are overlooked, in response to the masses’ impenetrable baggage of concerns and necessity, by those who barely stand on their seats of power and authority.

Fighting back on the lens of drivers is never a neglect for development towards an efficient system, mounting strikes of drivers and operators’ groups is not also to force government and progress back. Contrary, it is a despair that jeepney drivers and operators face because their concerns are undermined, deprived of their right to rise on their own, and sucked to the advantage of bigger corporations. As jeepney operators being required to consolidate their individual franchises under a cooperative, this is deemed “wrongful, deceitful, and coer- cive” according to Modesta Florancda, national president of the Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operators Nationwide (PISTON).

Families are not only affected with this continuously debated modernization program. Students are also strained if the jeepney phaseout will assertively plunge. Their allowances enough for fare will potentially be taken advantage of for higher fares by other public utility vehicles because of unavailability of jeepneys and the demand to go to school on time as the jeepneys are deemed to provide cheap and widely accessible ride among commuters, majority of which are students. Kabataan Party-list Representative Raoul Manuel has reached for students and workers, who primarily benefit from the service provided by jeepney drivers, not to leave jeepney drivers hanging. Instead, it must be their privilege and right to fight for their livelihood amidst the crisis of pandemic and cruel inflation.

If the government wants to make the implementation of modernization better, they should provide support for local jeepney drivers and manufacturers and tweak financial assistance programs. Modernization should be planned thoroughly to be implemented successfully. However, as long as jeepney drivers and those who are affected cannot see balancing interests, the public will see to it that there will be no stepping on the brake.