Cebu City Councilor James Cuenco. | file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Public utility vehicles (PUVs) violating health protocols should be wary starting next week, August 30, 2021, as the city government expects the citation tickets to be ready by then.
The Cebu City Council has long passed an amendment of the quarantine ordinance adding penalties for public transport violating health protocols.
However, this was not implemented even when the city was placed under the modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) because the citation tickets needed to be printed in Manila.
“As of yesterday, wa pa ta ka issue og citation tickets. Mao nga among gipafast track sa national printing office. It needs to be printed sa Manila because it’s an accountable form,” said Councilor James Cuenco, chairperson of the committee of transportation, in a phone interview.
(As of yesterday, we have not issued citation tickets. That is why we asked the national printing office to fast track it [the printing of the citation tickets]. It needs to be printed in Manila because it’s an accountable form.)
Cuenco said they would need the citation tickets so the deputized officers could collect penalties from the violators, but the city would plan to make photocopies for the meantime and mark them with control numbers if the delivered citation tickets by Monday would not be enough.
Furthermore, Cuenco said that the Management Information and Computer Services (MICS) would be forming a uniform database for the PUV violators so that even though they might be apprehended by different agencies such as the police, Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO), or other deputized officers, their penalties would be recorded in one database.
In this way, it will be easier for the system to identify those who have violated multiple times and they can expect to pay bigger fines.
Cuenco said he was expecting this system to be ready as soon as possible as the city would need a deterrent for PUV violators amid the rising cases.
He said that jeepneys, buses, and modern jeepneys, were still consistently caught for overcrowding, not wearing of face masks and face shields, and other public health violations.
The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) also attributed a significant portion of the active cases to transmission in public transportation.
Cuenco said he hoped that with a more stringent implementation of the penalties, the PUVs would begin to be more cautious in implementing health protocols.
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