Citom indicts Mandaue PUJ drivers of 97 cases

The City Traffic Operations Management recently filed in court 97 cases against some drivers of Mandaue-Cebu City route public utility jeepneys that the agency had arrested earlier for violating an ordinance banning them from entering Cebu City streets.

Antonio Pogado, chairman of the Nagkahiusang Drayber sa Sugbo group, was not among the respondents to the indictment filed and assigned to five branches of the Municipal Trial Court in Cities at the Palace of Justice.

Citom executive director Arnel Tancinco said the agency was compelled to file the charges because the drivers have continued to defy or ignore City Ordinance 1837.

The ordinance prohibits intra-city public utility vehicles from entering the city streets and provides that these jeepneys should drop and pick up passengers only at designated terminals. Intra-city PUVs are those that take routes to and from outside Cebu City.

The defiant drivers however insisted that City Ordinance 1837 is unconstitutional and illegal because it contradicts with the franchise that the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board had issued to them.

But Tancinco said the court already resolved the legal questions against C.O. 1837, adding that the city government, through the Citom, has the power to regulate PUJs entering the city streets.

Of all intra-city PUVs, only the drivers, of the Mandaue-Cebu City routes 21B and 22B, have insisted on entering Cebu City's General Maxilom Avenue and Osmeña Boulevard, to and from Mandaue City, in violation of C.O. 1837.

Citom has apprehended a number of these drivers, impounded their PUJs into its custody, and lately filed the cases against them.

The penalty for violating C.O. 1837 is a maximum imprisonment of one year, so the accused drivers were allowed to answer the charges in summary proceedings. - Rene U. Borromeo