MANILA, Philippines— The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) has recorded at least 300 daily accidents in the metropolis alone, its chairman, Danilo Lim, told a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
“Ang average accidents natin ay mahigit 300 daily. More than 300 accidents daily,” Lim said during the hearing of the Senate committee on public services.’’
(Our average number of accidents daily is around 300.)
“And unfortunately kung minsan, pati yung mga traffic enforcers namin nagiging biktima ng aksidente,” he said.
(And unfortunately sometimes, even our traffic enforcers become victims of accidents.)
Just last year, Lim said a female traffic enforcer was ran over and killed by an armoured vehicle.
“So talagang ang MMDA, all out talaga kami sa support sa panukalang batas na it [The MMDA is really all out in supporting this bill],” the official said, referring to several bills seeking to declare every 3rd Sunday of November as the “National Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims, Survivors, and their Families.”
“It’s about time na dapat siguro i-institutionalize na natin ito [that maybe, we need to institutionalize this],” he added.
The proposed measure was the subject of the hearing conducted by the committee chaired by Senator Grace Poe.
Lim said the number of accidents recorded by MMDA was higher than the estimated number earlier mentioned by Poe at the start of the hearing.
“By our estimate, around 13 accidents occur every hour in Metro Manila, with each costing between P420,000 to P3.47 million. But even these numbers cannot tell the full cost of losing a lot more,” the senator said in her opening statement.
If enacted into law, road crash victims, survivors, and their families will be commemorated every third Sunday of November “through religious mass services, designation of public spaces as memorials, blood donation campaigns, and other means.”
“Some may say that this bill is a band-aid solution for a problem of epidemic proportions. To these comments, the Committee responds that the substantive solutions to road accidents in the country are already contained in the proposed National Transportation Safety Board, which this representation already sponsored a few days ago, and in fact may be interpellated on this afternoon,” Poe said.
“Second, we must not forget that remembrance is a precursor of justice. Remembering road crash victims, survivors, and their families will not only prevent them from becoming just another statistic. It will also preserve the call to justice for future generations. It will insulate their tragedy from political amnesia,” Poe added. /jpv