Gwen: Truck ban a ‘knee jerk’ move

GOV. Gwendolyn Garcia  yesterday criticized the recent order discouraging the use of government dump trucks  and open-type vehicles for ferrying passengers.

She said the  memo of Department of the Interior and Local Governments (DILG) regional director “enjoining” mayors not to allow these vehicles to be used to transport people  “whether for free or for a fee” was a  “knee-jerk reaction” to last week’s road accident   in Barili town.

She said  officials should  evaluate “the reality on the ground” and reconsider the memo.

“Sometimes dump trucks are the only means of transportation in far off mountain barangays,”  she told reporters at the Capitol.

“The mayors have a point there. I don’t have to deal directly with the barangays. I do not have to deal directly with their constituents. It is the mayors. An accident is an accident whether you are riding a dump truck or a bus,” she said.

Garcia recalled last year’s bus accident in Balamban town, where a tourist bus of   Iranian medical students on a holiday  fell down a ravine in the Transcentral Highways, a winding mountain road generally off-limits to buses.

“Nobody wants an accident…While it is good that we evaluate what has happened, perhaps it is also good to consider existing realities on the ground,” the governor said.

The governor said the road worthiness of government vehicles should  always be checked.

Barili is the governor’s hometown, where her brother Marlon is vice mayor. Another brother, Nelson, president of the league of municipal mayors in Cebu, said the DILG memo should be tempered and that exemptions be made in the ban because many poor rural families rely on dump trucks to transport them during fiestas and funerals.

DILG Provincial Officer Jerome Gonzales corrected the impression that  the memo   bans the use of dump trucks.

“It is enjoining the mayors not to allow… It’s within their powers (to decide),” Gonzales told CDN.

The memo said, “City and municipal mayors in Region 7 are enjoined not to allow the use of their respective local government units’ open-type vehicles such as dump trucks and/or other vehicles to transport passengers whether for free or for a fee.”

The memo also called on mayors “to have their motor vehicles regularly checked and maintained, and for all their drivers to undergo training or re-training” with the Land Transportation Office and other related agencies.

Gonzales said that if the DILG memo is  strictly implemented, similar accidents would  be avoided. /Correspondent Carmel Loise Matus