Marinduque travelers hit port mismanagement

A long queue of Marinduque-bound passengers is formed in Lucena City seaport as the exodus of people to the provinces continued on Sunday, October 30, 2011, prior to All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. The passengers wait for their to buy tickets so that they can be allowed by the pier authority to wait inside the terminal building. PHOTO BY DELFIN T. MALLARI JR. INQUIRER SOUTHERN LUZON

LUCENA CITY—For throngs of irate and sleepless Marinduque-bound travelers stranded in Talao-Talao port here since Saturday, a chair to sit on while waiting for their ship to arrive and a number on a piece  of paper to access the ticket booth would have been enough to cool them down.

Jose Mendoza, a restaurant waiter in Manila, said he, his wife and three children have been waiting in line since they arrived at the port shortly before midnight Saturday.

“The port authority collects P30 terminal fee for every passenger but can’t afford to provide us with a stool to sit on while we wait for the ticket booth to open,” Manalo said in an interview on Sunday morning.

His children were sleeping on top of their baggage on the ground.

Other passengers who had also been standing in line since they arrived at the port the day before shared his complaint.

The terminal fee had been regularly rising but the port services continued to deteriorate, they said. “Several years ago, the fee was only P12 and now it’s already P30 but the service gets worse,” said one passenger.

The travelers, who were going home to visit the graves of their loved ones on All Souls’ Day on Tuesday, were further agitated when a shipping company employee announced that the next ship for Marinduque would leave port at 12 noon yet.

Fernando Almares, Moriones Port Services supervisor, maintained that they were in charge of ship passengers only when they were “inside the port terminal building.”

“Once a traveler has bought a ticket and paid the terminal fee, the passenger is allowed to enter the building and rest inside,” he explained. However, he added that in case of stranded passengers during typhoon, they were all accommodated inside the terminal free of charge.

He said a passenger who wanted to sleep could rent a bedding for P25 and occupy a space at the second floor of the two-story building.

Almares said the problem was the unavailability of ships to ferry passengers to Marinduque and not the management of the port. The ticketing booth only opens to serve passengers if the ship is already docked at the port, he said.

“That means that we will continue to stay at the line under the heat of the sun. But the port management can’t even manage the line of waiting passengers. Some new arrivals could easily sneak in front of the line to the detriment of passengers at the back,” said an angry woman.

The impatient passengers said the port management could have easily solved the problem by distributing a piece of paper with a corresponding number to passengers so no one could insert themselves in the line.