Drivers of transport network vehicle services on Thursday threatened to hold their first-ever transport holiday on July 8.
At a news conference in Quezon City, Ariel Inton, founding president of the Lawyers for Commuters Safety and Protection, said “biggest” alliances and communities of TNVS under the banner of TNVS Community would go offline on Monday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to temporarily stop operations.
Members of the Metro Manila Hatchback Community would join the group and march to the Office of the Ombudsman to dramatize their plan in filing an administrative case against Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board chairperson Martin Delgra III, the two board members and other department heads “behind the bottleneck for many applications for a provisional authority.”
“The 12-hour #Laban TNVS transport holiday on Monday is our collective protest against the LTFRB’s torture policies, which curtail our right to decent and legitimate livelihood to sustain our families,” the group’s statement read.
Inton called for a moratorium on arbitrary apprehensions of TNVS drivers.
The deactivated hatchback drivers reiterated their call to accept hatchback applications following the LTFRB’s Memorandum Circular 2018-005.
“Our #Laban TNVS Transport Holiday on Monday marks the beginning of more protests leading to the State of the Nation Address of President Rodrigo Duterte on July 22 and even beyond in order to send our appeal to the President to take immediate action on our situation, and until the LTFRB heeds our demands and addresses our concerns,” the group said.
Its lawyer, Mayor Mahatun, said they would file an administrative case against Delgra and the other LTFRB officials on Monday, saying the law mandates that every government agency must adopt the policy of easing business transactions.
“But LTFRB failed to do so,” he told the Manila Standard.
