Jeepney rally fails to disrupt class opening in Quezon City

June 5, 2017

The opening of classes in Quezon City on Monday  was not affected by a protest of the Unified Organization of Drivers and Transport Operators Nationwide to protest a program of the transportation department which they claim would phase out jeepneys. “Not all jeepney drivers participated. There’s only a few who did not drive today”, an official of the Quezon City Police Department information office who did not give her name said in a text message to The Daily Manila Shimbun. Two hundred members of PISTON (Pinagkaisang Samahan ng Tsuper at Operator Nationwide) led by leader George San Mateo and Joel Dominguez with 15 PUJs and seven private vehicles joined the program, police said. The group arrived in front of the National Housing Authority in Brgy. Old Capitol Quezon City about 8 a.m. and went to the LTFRB office in East Avenue Quezon City at 10 a.m., police added. The parade ended at 11 am, police said. The group opposed the phaseout of 15-year-old jeepneys which is a part of the modernization program of the Department of Transportation. “The Department of Transportation and Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board’s scrappage program, phase out of jeepney and other PUV’s in the framework of monopolization and corporatization is a program of liberalization”, San Mateo said in his social media account. San Mateo claimed “a huge foreign monopoly business” has connived with the departments of transportation, finance, energy and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board to “forcibly flood our country and forcibly sell their expensive imported but not durable and disposable electric, solar and euro4 vehicles.” This will destroy the Philippine jeepney industry, said San Mateo. (Alanna Ambi/DMS)