10 August 2005
EDITORIAL: If the police or POSO won’t, who will?
FOR the nth time, will City Hall please harken to the complaints of the growing list of victims of abusive tricycles in the city?
If the city police and the Public Order and Safety Office (POSO) can’t go after these three-wheeled brigands masquerading as public conveyances in city streets, who else will protect the unwary riders? It looks like passengers are being left pretty much to fend for themselves – with the vulture tricycle drivers free to prey on them – in this “proud, peaceful” city in the North.
Morning radio programs are replete with the public’s woes and unfortunate encounters with overcharging trikemen, who have apparently been thumbing their noses at all those transportation laws and regulations. They have practically implemented tariff rates of their own, even going ahead of public utility jeeps and buses in raising their charges at the first announcement of oil price increase.
The sad part of it all is, the city police and POSO (never mind the LTO or LTFRB, both agencies being too busy with whatever it is they’re doing at the highway corner) can easily stop these horrid tales of overcharging by tricycles by simply hauling in all the abusive characters complained against -- or even posing as plain passengers themselves to catch them in the act – but they don’t seem inclined to do it.
The city PNP and POSO, in short, do not show they mean business in enforcing the legal fare rates; after all, tricycle operation is within the ambit of the city government and therefore covered by local regulations.
But then, as a popular local radio commentator said, if the two units can’t even seem to catch colorum tricycles operating in the city with impunity, how expect them to bother implementing legal tricycle fare rates at all?
If the city police and the Public Order and Safety Office (POSO) can’t go after these three-wheeled brigands masquerading as public conveyances in city streets, who else will protect the unwary riders? It looks like passengers are being left pretty much to fend for themselves – with the vulture tricycle drivers free to prey on them – in this “proud, peaceful” city in the North.
Morning radio programs are replete with the public’s woes and unfortunate encounters with overcharging trikemen, who have apparently been thumbing their noses at all those transportation laws and regulations. They have practically implemented tariff rates of their own, even going ahead of public utility jeeps and buses in raising their charges at the first announcement of oil price increase.
The sad part of it all is, the city police and POSO (never mind the LTO or LTFRB, both agencies being too busy with whatever it is they’re doing at the highway corner) can easily stop these horrid tales of overcharging by tricycles by simply hauling in all the abusive characters complained against -- or even posing as plain passengers themselves to catch them in the act – but they don’t seem inclined to do it.
The city PNP and POSO, in short, do not show they mean business in enforcing the legal fare rates; after all, tricycle operation is within the ambit of the city government and therefore covered by local regulations.
But then, as a popular local radio commentator said, if the two units can’t even seem to catch colorum tricycles operating in the city with impunity, how expect them to bother implementing legal tricycle fare rates at all?
