Noy urged to suspend hike in transport fares

MANILA, Philippines - Lawmakers appealed yesterday to President Aquino to suspend the looming simultaneous hikes of transportation fares and toll fees and called for a review of privatization and build-operate-transfer (BOT) laws to protect Filipino consumers.

Davao City Rep. Karlo Nograles, Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone, and Bayan Muna party list Reps. Teodoro Casiño and Neri Colmenares said the Cabinet economic

cluster’s endorsement of the hikes in jeepney, bus, LRT and MRT fares should be reconsidered even before public consultations are held.

Evardone said the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) should conduct a thorough revenue of “these upward fares to find out if they’re justified because this will impact on consumers.”

“NEDA should also come up with measures that will offset these increases, such as the possibility of wage increases based on inflation,” Evardone said.

He said while inflation appears to be within “reasonable levels,” the series of increases, if not justified and not offset by other measures, would have inflationary effects.

“Meaning, it would trigger a round of increases of prices of consumer products, and this may dampen the positive outlook of our country if this inflationary measures are not checked,” Evardone said.

Casiño said the Aquino administration should look for less burdensome ways to solve the financial hemorrhage of the train lines.

“Hundreds of thousands of people take the LRT and MRT trains daily precisely because it is cheap and efficient. People who have little time and less money take the train to work. The Aquino administration should look deeper into where the large government subsidy to the train system actually goes before adding another burden to the riding public,” he said.

Nograles said the government should defer planned hikes of MRT and LRT fares as this would also result in more traffic congestion in Metro Manila’s major thoroughfares.

Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Benitez and Ang Kasangga party-list Rep. Teodorico Haresco, vice chairman of the House committee on small business and entrepreneurship development, called for a review of BOT laws as many public utility services are privatized.

He proposed that a cap on the frequency of toll and fare hikes and other charges be imposed.

“For example, I think that there should be a certain cap on the amount and frequency on the increase of their service charges. This will ensure a steady profit for the companies who enter into PPP deals with the government without causing too much shock to the public. In short, things like toll fees, electricity costs and even MRT fares should be moderate and predictable,” Haresco said.

“Public welfare should not be sacrificed in exchange for capital investments. The government should exercise caution on its future privatization plans and Private Public Partnership (PPP) arrangements and see to it that public interest is fully protected,” he said.

He said although critical services, which are now in the hands of the private sector such as water, electricity and even expressway management, have improved in terms of quality and efficiency, public utility companies are rushing too much in their bid to recover their investment costs and immediately rake in profits.

“That’s the problem in allowing the private sector to run key public utility services because while they are more efficient, private companies are doing business purely for profit, in which case, public welfare is completely set aside. This is something that the government should consider before entering into privatization and PPP arrangements on projects that have direct public impact,” Haresco said.

Benitez called for transparency in the way private proponents compute their increases.

“Let’s say a proponent will put in P1 billion to develop our tollways. That P1 billion they want to recover in four years, we tell them instead of recovering in four years, let’s tell them nine years,” he said.

10 simple tips

Meantime, a private lawyer yesterday offered President Aquino advice on how to stop the toll hikes.

In a statement titled “10 Very Simple And Easy Things That P-Noy Can Do For His ‘Bosses’ To Protect Them From Exorbitant Toll Hikes,” Ernesto Francisco, Jr. said after President Aquino met with his economic advisers on Wednesday, Malacañang immediately announced that the “toll hikes are here to stay.”

Francisco said Communications Secretary Ricky Carandang was even “blunt, if not insensitive,” in communicating the Palace announcement to the public saying that, “You just have to bear with it, we will see the benefits in due time.”

Francisco said President Aquino actually has very broad powers under the Constitution and existing laws to act on the toll hikes if he really wants to.

For one, Francisco said, Aquino can do what then President Joseph Estrada did to stop the toll hikes in 1999 when the latter simply issued a memorandum directing the Toll Regulatory Board to hold in abeyance the implementation of the toll hikes “pending the outcome of the public hearings which (it is) mandated to conduct under (its) charter.”

Francisco said Aquino should direct the TRB to make public how the project cost of the rehabilitation of the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) from Alabang, Muntinlupa City to Sto. Tomas, Batangas ballooned from P5.88 billion when it was first launched by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to P12.5 billion at present.

Aquino should also direct the TRB to seek the assistance of the Commission on Audit (COA) to audit and validate the project cost of the SLEX as provided under Letter of Instructions No. 579 and to make public the results of such audit.

Apart from this, the President should also direct the TRB to conduct public hearings and to hold in abeyance the toll hikes in the meantime.

Aquino should also direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate why and how the SLEX project was transferred from its original contractor, Hopewell Construction Corp., Inc. (HCCI), to MTD Capital Berhad, after HCCI failed to start the project and the National Development Corporation (NDC) and Philippine National Construction Corporation (PNCC) had already signed an agreement for NDC to undertake the SLEX project.

The DOJ should also find out whether MTD Capital Berhad charged what it spent to take over the project to the project cost.

Aquino also should direct Secretary Jose de Jesus of the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) to inhibit himself from participating in TRB deliberations and from giving advice to the President or acting as part of his economic team with respect to the toll hikes, considering the long and close association of De Jesus with tollway operators as president and CEO of the Manila North Tollways Corp. which operates the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) and as president of Manila Electric Company whose major stockholders have interests in tollway operations.

The President should further ask DOTC Undersecretary Dante Velasco to explain why he told media that the TRB had conducted public hearings and that the approval of the toll hikes complied with due process when, in fact, they did not.

He also advised the President to conduct an honest-to-goodness review of the past performance of the TRB and its officials and order its revamp, including the replacement of its officials whose pronouncements have consistently been inconsistent with the said agency’s supposed role as an adjudicatory body.

The President was also urged to appoint representatives of motorists to the TRB board whose primary task would be to protect the interest of the users of the toll expressways.

The President should direct the reorganized TRB to make sure that tollway operators will get a rate of return on their investments that is fair and reasonable and which will not impose undue burden on motorists.

Finally, Francisco said the President should adopt as his principal New Year’s resolution that in all of his official acts, he shall be true to his promise to the Filipino people that they are his boss.

Francisco was the lawyer who filed a petition earlier before the Supreme Court to reverse an Ombudsman decision clearing former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo and seven others of criminal charges in connection with the anomalous $329-million national broadband network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Corp. The project was scrapped in 2007 on charges of overpricing. – With Sandy Araneta