Transport groups assert success in two-day strike

ILOILO CITY, Philippines — The two-day transport holiday could have made a big impact had all public utility vehicles, including cabs, joined in the strike, but the Kahublagan Kontra Kartel, a coalition of transport groups and people's organizations, declared that it was a big success.

Nick Dalisay, president of the Iloilo City Alliance of Drivers Associations (ICADA), averred his earlier pronouncement that 95 percent of the public transport sector joined them while 98 percent of the PUJs joined in the transport holiday. "Successful siya because we get the number that we expected," he said in Hiligaynon dialect.

Dalisay said the over-all transport holiday was not greatly affected by the negligible number of jeepneys who chose to defy the order of their transport group head. "We respect their decision in a way that we hope that they also respect our decision of holding the transport holiday," he said.

Just like on the strike's first day, the second day was marked with several PUJs still plying the city thoroughfares, and just like the other day, a good number of the Federation of Iloilo Jeepney Operators Drivers Association (FIJODA) opted to ground their jeepneys.

Only jeepneys plying the Sta. Barbara-Pavia to Iloilo City and vice versa and Leganes-Iloilo City and vice versa opted not to participate in the strike.

The Police Regional Office-6, for its part, said the transport strike was peaceful. Chief Supt. Cipriano Querol, Jr., PRO-6 director, said they have not received any report of harassment from transport leaders in all three Western Visayas provinces that joined in the transport strike.

In Iloilo City, police director Sr. Supt. Marietto Valerio, Jr. said transport groups and militant organizations peacefully converged in the different centers they established but unlike the KKK's declaration, he said that only 85 percent of the transportation was crippled. — THE FREEMAN