Passengers rush to a waiting bus for their ride home at the Cebu South Bus Terminal. (CDN PHOTO/ JUNJIE MENDOZA)
PEOPLE going home to the south are encouraged to postpone their plans to go home until Monday if they see the terminal full of passengers waiting to take the bus home.
Jonathan Tumulak, Cebu South Bus Terminal manager, made this appeal to southbound Cebu passengers so that they would not be inconvenienced by being among the hundreds of people waiting at the terminal for their bus ride home.
“Awhag nalang ta sa publiko if makita nila karong gabii o ugma nga daghan na gani kaayo pasahero, dili nalang modayon total naa pa man Lunes aron dili pud sila magdasok maayo sa terminal (We appeal to the passengers that if they see the terminal already full and crowded, to postpone their plans to go home until Monday so that they would not add to the crowd at the terminal),” Tumulak said in a phone interview yesterday.
He said that as of 4 p.m. yesterday, the buses and minibuses at the terminal had already made 400 trips.
Tumulak also encouraged bus operators to have more driver relievers to take over drivers returning to the terminals so that well-rested drivers could continue to drive passengers home to the south as long as their buses would still be in good condition.
Tumulak said that so far yesterday, they could still control the passengers coming in the terminal.
He said that they only encountered minor problems yesterday, such as there were vendors and dispatchers, who went inside but were not accredited by the management of terminal.
They were immediately told to leave the terminal.
Tumulak also said that Gov. Hilario Davide III also visited the terminal yesterday to check on the passengers and buses there.
Cebu North Bus
At the Cebu North Bus Terminal (CNBT), Zosimo Jumao-as, CNBT manager, said they were expecting at least 100,000 people to ride buses at the terminal on Saturday and Sunday.
Jumao-as said that they would be expecting half of this number to be served on Saturday and the rest on Sunday and Monday.
He said he would be expecting the surge of passengers from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday.
“We just hope there will be less to no accidents on the way to avoid shortage of buses, and of course, for passengers to be home safe,” said Jumao-as.
He also said that they were also hoping that there would be more buses returning from the towns to the terminal so that they could lessen the hundreds of passengers waiting for their turn to ride the buses home to the north.
Last year, he said they encountered a shortage of buses after the work hours as passengers flocked to the terminal, and there were less buses returning to the terminal from the towns.