The law may be harsh but it is the law, so goes a tired cliché that’s been circulated ad nauseum among legal circles and law classes. That dictum applies quite well on Joint Administrative Order 2014.
Last Tuesday’s dialogue between Cebu’s transport groups and the government’s regulatory transport agencies wasn’t confrontational but it did show the adamant stance taken by both the Land Transportation Office and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board.
The tough stance was evident in their refusal to amend the so-called out-of-line rule which penalizes with heavy fines drivers and operators that ply routes not covered by their franchise.
Under that policy, out-of-line violators are considered as operating colorum units and are thus illegal. Transport groups who held strikes or “pahulays” (transport holidays) to denounce what they described as “excessive fines and penalties” have somewhat modified their stance by saying they (or at least some of them) are not averse to such sanctions.
“I just would like to clarify that we are not against the colorum. We also have no problems about the fines. What I want to say is there should be some revisions of its provisions because there are some peculiarities about it,” said Ryan Yu, chairman of the Cebu Integrated Transport Service Cooperative (Citrasco).
What these peculiarities are they have yet to spell out. But based on what we gleaned from their explanations, Cebu’s transport leaders fear that these peculiarities may become loopholes that would be abused by LTO personnel and result in extortion of drivers and operators.
The danger that there would be abuses committed by enforcers of laws that are either good or faulty by intention and design is always present, but shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to fully implement them.
Yu and the other transport leaders appear to want the LTO and the LTFRB to go easy on operators since they are already burdened with paying the salaries of their drivers and the upkeep of their units.
If the drivers commit another violation, they said, the operators should only be punished if they don’t have the necessary papers. But what if on their second violation, the drivers wind up causing the deaths of their passengers through their gross negligence and conscious violation of transport regulations?
Operating public utility vehicles (PUVs) is no easy business and one cannot even grasp the costs that each operator and driver takes on each day they hit the streets to transport every commuter to their respective destinations.
But the government shouldn’t treat with kid gloves the operators and drivers who violate the law not just once, but repeatedly, at the expense of the commuters whose welfare and safety remains the paramount overriding priority of every stakeholder in the transport sector.
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