CDO drivers, operators doubtful transport coops will work

Cagayan de Oro, Misamis Oriental. INQUIRER FILES

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY — As the final deadline for transport consolidation arrived on April 30, drivers and operators of jeepneys here expressed doubts whether transport cooperatives would work.

Joel Gabatan, chairperson of the United Drivers Association (Unida) in Cagayan de Oro City, and a former leader of the Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (Piston), said he didn’t think the current model for transport cooperative would work. He said he did not think the leaders of these cooperative models were equipped to run, manage, and sustain the modernization plan.

“We are not against the modernization of the transport sector,” he said. “We are against the consolidation of transport operators, who had to surrender their franchises to the cooperative,” Gabatan said.

Gabatan said the government should audit the current cooperatives instead as allowing them to operate without such an audit may result in the failure of the modernization plan.

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“(This will) put members of the cooperative, the former jeepney drivers and operators, in a worse situation,” he said.

“The feedback we are getting is that cooperative leaders do not have management skills and some cooperatives are losing money while the mini-buses they operate are failing,” Gabutan said.

He cited a cooperative operating along the Canitoan route in this city, which was supposed to deploy 49 vehicles but provided only less than half of what was required of them under the approved local transport plan.

At the Mindanao transport summit here on April 26, transport cooperatives from Regions 9, 10, 11, and Caraga opposed any extension of the April 30 deadline for consolidation.

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Land Transport Franchising and Regulatory Board Region 10 Director Abosamen Matuan asked the cooperatives not to deny applicants for membership even as he pointed out that in Cagayan de Oro City, there were less than 100 individual transport operators left.

“We are asking the cooperatives to accept applications and not to charge applicants exuberant fees,” Matuan said.

“We acknowledge that one of the problems we faced is the lack of knowledge about establishing and running a cooperative. That is why some operators are apprehensive about joining cooperatives,” Matuan added.

But he said this was just normal as the transport cooperative was relatively a new concept in the country. “There are adjustments that need to be done,” he said. “The biggest challenge after the April 30 deadline is how to equip these transport cooperatives with the technical know-how and the necessary knowledge how to run a cooperative,” Matuan said.

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Cheng Ordonez, chairperson of the Mindanao Federation of Transport Cooperative (MFTC), pointed out the need to establish common standards and practices (among transport cooperatives).

“The MFTC will ensure coexistence in service quality and safety across different transport cooperatives all over Mindanao,” Ordonez said.

MFTC represents 46 transportation cooperatives in Mindanao with close to 2,000 individual members.

Gabatan also questioned why many cooperatives were charging high fees for membership. “We must question why cooperatives charge at least P20,000, some even go as high as P50,000 when membership fees used to be just less than P1,000 before,” he said.

He said cooperatives faced the possibility of failure because its system and structure was susceptible to abuses. “There is the question of leadership and management skills. We need to see if there are successful stories in the modernization program because the biggest threat to failure is the cooperative itself. That is why we need to audit them before we pursue this consolidation deadline,” Gabatan said.