Iloilo City police on red alert for transport strike
By Nestor P. Burgos Jr.
Visayas Bureau
First Posted 19:44:00 05/11/2008
ILOILO CITY, Philippines--Police here declared a red alert starting 6 p.m. on Sunday in preparation for Monday's nationally coordinated strike of transport organizations.
Senior Supt. Ricardo de la Paz, Iloilo police director, said in a telephone interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net), they would set up checkpoints and field more policemen to ensure peace and order during the strike.
Police will also assist local government units in ferrying stranded commuters, especially those coming from the interior towns to Iloilo City.
The provincial government will field at least 10 dump trucks to ferry employees and commuters from the district plazas to the city proper, according to Dela Paz.
Transport groups in Iloilo and Aklan led by the Pinag-isang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (Piston, United Organization of Drivers and Operators Nationwide) will stage the transport strike on Monday in protest of successive oil price hikes. Prices have risen five times and up to P5 per liter from December to May.
The transport strike in Capiz led by the Hugpong Transport Capiz will be held on Tuesday because the city will commemorate the anniversary of the declaration of Roxas City as a chartered city on Monday. The transport groups and militant organizations will, however, hold a march rally on Monday from the Albar Terminal to the city hall, according to Piston-Panay coordinator Edgar Salarda.
A study of the Hugpong Transport Alliance shows that jeepney drivers’ incomes per month have decreased by P1,600 due to the oil price hikes since December.
The groups are demanding the scrapping of the value-added tax on oil products and the repeal of the Oil Deregulation Law, which allows oil companies to set the local pump prices, without regulation from government.
Salarda said the removal of the value added tax and excise taxes on oil products would lessen the impact of the sharp rise in oil prices in the world market which reached a record high of $124 per barrel last week.
The militant fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya, National Force of the Fishers’ Movement in the Philippines), meanwhile, lauded Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra for urging the people to join the scheduled nationwide transport strike.
"We express our deepest gratitude to Bishop Navarra for his politically and morally correct divine intervention. The Gospel for truth, justice and emancipation is well served to the people with this call for the public to join the people's strike against unjust and exploitative oil price hikes," said Pamalakaya national chairman Fernando Hicap in an e-mailed statement.
Navarra urged the people in a pastoral letter to show their indignation over the oil price increase by joining the protest actions.
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