V-hire operators demand from Tom P1M in damages

The operators of vans-for-hire, whose terminal at P. del Rosario extension was closed down upon the order of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, would ask the court to order the mayor the payment of P1 million in damages. Lawyer Gloria Lastimosa-Dalawampu, who represented the members of the Cebu 3rd District V-Hire Operators and Drivers Multipurpose Cooperative in their special civil case filed before the court, said she would bring the issue during the pre-trial conference on July 26. Dalawampu said the P1 million in damages they are asking from the mayor is just the equivalent amount of the losses incurred by her clients for the rental of the lot they utilized as terminal, and their supposed income since the terminal was closed on November 2004.

Rene Sanchez, who also owns a fleet of passenger vehicles, said the cooperative is still paying P60,000 a month to the lot owner even when the terminal was padlocked by the City Hall last year, of which they described as a blatant defiance of a court order. Dalawampu said Regional Trial Court judge Ireneo Lee Gako has issued a writ of preliminary injunction on October 29 last year directing Osmeña and all persons acting upon his orders to refrain from implementing and enforcing City Ordinance 1958, the ordinance that regulates the operations of terminals in the city. Gako's order refrained anybody from "harassing, apprehending or in any manner distracting the drivers, conductors and commuters availing of plaintiff's terminal or from any other acts which may directly or indirectly undermine, subvert and render nugatory the restraint of the acts therein ought to be enjoined." But the mayor explained that the closure of the terminal managed by such cooperative has nothing to do with the implementation of City Ordinance 1958, but because the terminal operators failed to secure business permit and pay taxes to the city.

Dalawampu, however, was quick to say that her clients are exempted from paying taxes as provided for under the provisions of Republic Act 6938, otherwise known as the Cooperative Code of the Philippines.