Yet again, classes were suspended Monday and some government offices closed earlier than usual because of the transportation strike mounted by various groups. As of press time it is not yet known whether the suspensions will continue Tuesday and the rest of the week.
The Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operators Nationwide has organized a nationwide transport strike to protest the phasing out of jeepneys under the public utility vehicle modernization program of the government.
The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board has warned it would cancel the franchises of jeepneys joining the strike. Top officials of the transport group are also facing charges for violating the Public Service Act.
The modernization program intends to do away with old, dilapidated and smoke-belching jeepneys that supposedly put passengers’ and other pedestrians’ health and safety in danger.
This is not the first time this has happened. Striking jeepney drivers and operators know best how to throw their weight around—by punishing not the government that they believe makes their lives difficult, but the hapless students or workers who rely on them, having no other option.
Of course the drivers and operators have valid grounds for protest. Many of them will find themselves mired in debt if they replaced their old units by acquiring new ones, even if they took out loans from the government.
But the government, too, has the obligation to keep its citizens safe.
What the strikers forget is that their trade is imbued with public service, instead of only the principles of economics. They must therefore consider that they are doing the public harm when they act petulant.
Meanwhile, the government should have looked for more palatable ways to implement its modernization program so that the age-old strikes, and the resulting loss of educational opportunities and productivity, can be avoided.
This week’s rumblings may be temporarily quelled, but they will show themselves again in the future, yet again, until a decisive and acceptable compromise is reached.
