NEWS: Flexi-fare ordinance geared up for approval next week

CO asks for patience of commuting public

nov 6

Tagum City Mayor Rey Chiong Uy has bared that the flexi-fare ordinance that he initiated is geared up for approval by the city council next week following the recent public hearing and amid calls for fare rollbacks due to further decreases of gasoline prices in the recent days.

In a phone-patch interview yesterday with “El Kapitan” program anchors over Sonshine Radio 711 of Pastor Apollo Quiboloy in Davao City, Mayor Uy asked for patience of commuting public in the city to wait saying, “gamay lang gyud nga agwanta kay kinahanglan man gyud ug balaod usa mapaubos nato ang pletehan.”

He reiterated that the flexi-fare ordinance has brackets of tricycle fares that would either increase or decrease depending on the current pump prices of gasoline.

Under the ordinance, the City Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board is the one which will call for fare increase or fare decrease from time to time.

“It’s one of our firsts and with it, we do away with the long process of making an ordinance where public hearings and other tedious processes are to be taken,” Uy said in venacular in view of the current volatility of the gasoline prices.

It was learned that the mayor himself pegged the price brackets in the draft ordinance made by City Legal Officer Atty. Roland Tumanda a week after the ordinance on fare increase from P7 to P10 effected last September 19.

During the public hearing on the flexi-fare ordinance, reports said that some tricycle drivers were asking that that new ordinance would be effected by January next year so they could recoup their losses when the fare was still P7 and the gasoline price had once hit P60 per liter sometime in July. In January this year, gasoline prices only hovered around over P30 per liter. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News) http://ruralurbanews.blogspot.com

OPINION: Bruised ego

BLOGISTA
By Cha Monforte

Radio listeners of DXDN (Radyo Ukay) in Tagum City including me expected that the City Council would finally uncork its tit-for-tat rage against the North Davao College-Tagum officials who were already present in yesterday’s session. Still a moderated blowing of one’s top is understandable especially when you’re in your own territory and after being snubbed and spurned by a cabal who made them look like toothless tigers.

Had Councilor Joey Millan and his colleagues not withheld yesterday their verdict of declaring as PNGs (persona non grata) the respondent NDC-Tagum officials, we could have seen how the august body make legislative offensives while they are rightly, and not wrongly, on reasoned grounds. Three times of snobbery, regardless of the delayed reply letter of the NDC-Tagum officials after Wednesday’s deadline and their yesterday’s presence, is a ground too much for a kid who knows an uno-dos-tres warning from a playing elder.  We expected not a kid’s glove treatment from the august city council to the respondent NDC-Tagum officials.

Kons. Millan last week threatened he would no longer attend the public hearing on the NDC-Tagum’s controversy on requiring nursing graduates to shell out P10,000 for the nursing review and P7,000 for the mock board exams to be conducted by the school before their school credentials would be issued to them, saying that the NDC officials by snubbing the city council’s invitation thrice and submitting their reply letter beyond Wednesday’s deadline have already waived their right to air their side.

But yesterday the good councilor made a surprising turnaround, successfully convincing his colleagues to hold yet the 7 resolutions contra the NDC-Tagum for 7 days for the school officials to refute why the 7 contra resolutions should not be approved in the next session. Hellow? City Mayor Rey Uy, in wanting to end carnapping and reported kotong activities a day after bishops called for change in governance to stump out corruption in government, beat them in the draw over the weekend by declaring persona non grata the Highway Patrol Group officials and personnel assigned in the territorial highways in Tagum City.

In a brief tangle with Kons. Rey Salve, Kons. Millan stressed he has all been concerned on due process, too, like Salve. He also belabored the point that the 7 NDC contra resolutions were not yet approved, and then the matters were laid on the table for decision by next week. They could have declared the NDC-Tagum officials with persona non grata status on such solidly right and well documented facts. But thanks or no thanks, the city council is peopled, too, by four lawyers including Millan. Ukay’s listening pundits though are left to hear the spectacle as more bark sans bite, though it’s a threatening stick that matters for the NDC nursing graduates and their parents.

But okay, let’s give them the chance- to hear NDC-Tagum’s side within the 7-day breathing period, perhaps within which backroom channeling could be made for a win-win solution, with the possible of restitution on the part of NDC-Tagum, that of allowing their nursing graduates leave their alma mater without strings attached but with the school credentials in wishing them good luck in their review classes and mock board exams at review center or school of their choice, and so due refunds must be done, as quid pro quos in exchange of doing away with the persona non grata tag and the non-revocations of the school’s  permits and accreditations from the city and CHED authorities. I don’t preempt, the school officials have also their own story to tell. But pundits remind- the august city council, too, has its own ego- bruised. (For online edition, visit my blog at: https://cha4t.wordpress.com, for comments, reactions e-mail: chamonforte@yahoo.com, or ruralurbanews@yahoo.com)