Manila relents, allows window period for truckers

MANILA, Philippines—Following a meeting with exporters and other government officials on Thursday, the City of Manila decided to temporarily modify its daytime truck ban by allowing truckers to ply their routes between a window period of 10 a.m to 3 p.m.

“The new truck ban will be enforced except that there will be an extension during daytime,” Vice Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso told reporters after the meeting. “It’s a good start. We gave way to the request of the import-export industry and I want to [make it] clear [that it was not] because of the truckers’ threat.”

The window period will be in effect starting on Monday for about six to eight months to allow businesses to transfer operations to the Subic and Batangas ports, he said.

The meeting was attended by Domagoso, Mayor Joseph Estrada, Councilor Manuel Zarcal, secretary to the mayor Edward Serapio, Estrada’s former Trade Secretary Jose Pardo, Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority chair Francis Tolentino and three officials from the export industry.

Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr., chair of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said they were happy with the extension and Manila was probably right to decongest the ports in the city.

“We’ll be able to make do with the given window,” he said, adding that the truckers would be unreasonable if they were to continue their threat to go on indefinite strike starting Monday to protest the expanded truck ban.

“We are their clients and it’s OK for us, it should be OK with them,” he told reporters.

The expanded truck ban allows eight-wheelers and vehicles with a gross weight of over 4,500 kilograms to ply roads in Manila only between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., seven hours longer than the current one.

Trucks carrying perishables and petroleum products, as well as vehicles used for government projects, are exempted from the ban, which is lifted on Sundays and holidays.

Earlier, trucking groups threatened to shut down their operations indefinitely starting on Monday.

The Manila government, however, was unfazed and said that should the truckers make good on their threat, it would not be the city’s loss.

At the same time, it announced that it was considering granting exemptions for truckers for an annual fee, just like it did when it implemented a bus ban last year.

“If the City of Manila will push through [with] the truck ban, it will be as if we are not operating anyway. The majority of the sector agreed on stopping operations,” Aduana Business Club Inc. (ABCI) president Mary Zapata told the Inquirer. ABCI is a group of truckers, importers, exporters, brokers and other businesses in the cargo moving industry.

Teddy Gervacio, president of the Integrated North Harbor Truckers Association, said in a radio interview that with the implementation of the expanded truck ban, it would take three days for truckers to go to their destinations from the port.

According to Zapata, around 4,500 to 5,000 containers arrive at the two ports in Manila every day.

“We can deliver 4,000 containers a day. More or less, there are 500 to 1,000 left over, so there is already a problem of port congestion. If we stop operations for three days or a week, you can just imagine how [congested] the Port of Manila will [be],” she said.

Zapata added that the manufacturing sector would not be able to receive its delivery of raw materials while the image of the country would also be affected.

But Domagoso said the granting of exemptions was being studied by the Traffic Management Council headed by Mayor Joseph Estrada. The fee may range from P400 to P800 per truck every year.