Woes at city traffic management office
By Pet Melliza/ The Beekeeper
People at the traffic management office of Iloilo City have a nice way of dealing with drivers redeeming their confiscated licenses: they require their victims to surrender their receipts, their sole proofs that they indeed atoned for their sins by paying for the fines.
Columnist Peter Jimenea personally experienced it: he paid P200 commensurate to his “offense” as indicated in the temporary permit to operate (TPO) ticket issued by the apprehending traffic enforcer. Next, he was directed to another window to claim his driver’s license. He was asked to surrender the receipt before he could get the license. He refused since he was paying “under protest” as noted in the receipt as a way of challenging the manner of apprehension in the regular court. (He did bring the traffic enforcer and his associate in court but the case was settled at the level of the public prosecutor.)
There’s something awry at such arrangement; the drivers are made to surrender the receipts to the same office that issued it. That invites uninspiring thoughts that the same set of receipts issued without the name of the penalized drivers are “recyclable”. Racketeers in that office must be raking a windfall daily by simply reissuing the same receipts to different payors.
It is not just Peter Jimenea who narrated that. Ask any driver who has paid fines and they will recycle the same tale on the receipts they had to leave behind before leaving the traffic management office. We don’t know how this creative tradition of pocketing fines collected began.
The minimum fine charged for a minor traffic infraction is P200. It may appear peanuts to some but for drivers taking home an average P200 to P300 daily, being slapped with a minimum fine may mean loved ones eating less than their what their bodies needs.
We have yet to see the social outcome of the hike in fines for traffic infractions. It has not resulted to the city streets decongested or the traffic flowing smoothly. Neither has it been shown us that the fines collected are plowed back to improve traffic management services or enhance the welfare of the enforcers who thrive on starvation wage averaging P4,000 monthly for a ten-hour daily grind.
During the inglorious mayorship of one Jerry Trenas, traffic management clamped down only on hapless PUJ drivers, if we looked at the way his administration enforced the traffic ordinance. The enforcers, by their action, sent the signal that the rich and famous were exempted from discipline and penalty.
Trenas is now congressman for the lone district of Iloilo City but he had made the rich and famous happy during his reign by allowing them to treat roads as personal garages.
While PUJ drivers got tickets for “obsruction” for squeezing their way between two vehicles at designated loading-unloading spots, the rich and famous friends of Trenas freely parked their vehicles on roadsides, including segments designated exclusively for PUJ loading-unloading and therefore, a ticket-zone for parked private vehicles.
Yours truly was once seated behind a driver who slowed down to buy an apple to stave off hunger. An enforcer apprehended him for “obstruction”. The purchase happened in mere seconds, he signaled the street hawker and the latter quickly slipped it to his hands but just the same, the unforgiving enforcer issued him a ticket though that same spot was a loading-unloading zone at the Delgado – Valeria streets junction.
The rich and famous friends of Jerry Trenas freely parked their luxury vehicles for hours, even one whole day; they even did so diagonally in constricted streets where PUJs readily get fined for merely picking up or dropping passengers. They even had the temerity to plant signs declaring the roads fronting their establishments parking areas “reserved for” them or their clients.
Mayor Jedd Patrick Mabilog says he is no clone of his predecessor, and that he wants to rid Chinatown of private vehicles parked for hours, and signs declaring the road side as “exclusive” parking lot for the establishment owners or its clients.
His self-congratulation on that regards is still premature. The roads around the Central Market area and Iznart Street where establishment owners are notorious for appropriating roads for personal garage, still remains haven for “mobile obstructions” that Mayor Mabilog claims to have cleared.
People at the traffic management office of Iloilo City have a nice way of dealing with drivers redeeming their confiscated licenses: they require their victims to surrender their receipts, their sole proofs that they indeed atoned for their sins by paying for the fines.
Columnist Peter Jimenea personally experienced it: he paid P200 commensurate to his “offense” as indicated in the temporary permit to operate (TPO) ticket issued by the apprehending traffic enforcer. Next, he was directed to another window to claim his driver’s license. He was asked to surrender the receipt before he could get the license. He refused since he was paying “under protest” as noted in the receipt as a way of challenging the manner of apprehension in the regular court. (He did bring the traffic enforcer and his associate in court but the case was settled at the level of the public prosecutor.)
There’s something awry at such arrangement; the drivers are made to surrender the receipts to the same office that issued it. That invites uninspiring thoughts that the same set of receipts issued without the name of the penalized drivers are “recyclable”. Racketeers in that office must be raking a windfall daily by simply reissuing the same receipts to different payors.
It is not just Peter Jimenea who narrated that. Ask any driver who has paid fines and they will recycle the same tale on the receipts they had to leave behind before leaving the traffic management office. We don’t know how this creative tradition of pocketing fines collected began.
The minimum fine charged for a minor traffic infraction is P200. It may appear peanuts to some but for drivers taking home an average P200 to P300 daily, being slapped with a minimum fine may mean loved ones eating less than their what their bodies needs.
We have yet to see the social outcome of the hike in fines for traffic infractions. It has not resulted to the city streets decongested or the traffic flowing smoothly. Neither has it been shown us that the fines collected are plowed back to improve traffic management services or enhance the welfare of the enforcers who thrive on starvation wage averaging P4,000 monthly for a ten-hour daily grind.
During the inglorious mayorship of one Jerry Trenas, traffic management clamped down only on hapless PUJ drivers, if we looked at the way his administration enforced the traffic ordinance. The enforcers, by their action, sent the signal that the rich and famous were exempted from discipline and penalty.
Trenas is now congressman for the lone district of Iloilo City but he had made the rich and famous happy during his reign by allowing them to treat roads as personal garages.
While PUJ drivers got tickets for “obsruction” for squeezing their way between two vehicles at designated loading-unloading spots, the rich and famous friends of Trenas freely parked their vehicles on roadsides, including segments designated exclusively for PUJ loading-unloading and therefore, a ticket-zone for parked private vehicles.
Yours truly was once seated behind a driver who slowed down to buy an apple to stave off hunger. An enforcer apprehended him for “obstruction”. The purchase happened in mere seconds, he signaled the street hawker and the latter quickly slipped it to his hands but just the same, the unforgiving enforcer issued him a ticket though that same spot was a loading-unloading zone at the Delgado – Valeria streets junction.
The rich and famous friends of Jerry Trenas freely parked their luxury vehicles for hours, even one whole day; they even did so diagonally in constricted streets where PUJs readily get fined for merely picking up or dropping passengers. They even had the temerity to plant signs declaring the roads fronting their establishments parking areas “reserved for” them or their clients.
Mayor Jedd Patrick Mabilog says he is no clone of his predecessor, and that he wants to rid Chinatown of private vehicles parked for hours, and signs declaring the road side as “exclusive” parking lot for the establishment owners or its clients.
His self-congratulation on that regards is still premature. The roads around the Central Market area and Iznart Street where establishment owners are notorious for appropriating roads for personal garage, still remains haven for “mobile obstructions” that Mayor Mabilog claims to have cleared.
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