AMID ouster calls, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade still has the full support of his San Beda law classmate, President Rodrigo Duterte, for “doing his best to solve the country’s traffic woes,” Malacañang said Saturday.
“Secretary Tugade, as a presidential appointee, enjoys the trust and confidence of the President. With barely a few months [on the job] he is really doing his best,” Communications Assistant Secretary Ana Marie Paz Banaag told state radio dzRB.
“We acknowledge that there are sectors who are calling for Secretary Tugade to resign but then we can see that they are doing their best also at their end to solve the traffic problem and everything that has concerns about the DoTr,” she added.
On Tuesday, the Transportation Department took the cudgels for Tugade after a newly-formed Transport group called for his resignation, saying Tugade answered “baseless accusations against him with ‘work, work, work’.”
It cited the relaunch of the Pasig Ferry, the release of driver’s license cards by the first quarter of 2017, and the rehabilitation of the Philippine National Railways line to Bicol and other initiatives such as the opening the second phase of the Naia Expressway project together with the Department of Public Works and Highways and San Miguel Corp., bottlenecks at the LRT-1, and ensuring an avenue to receive complaints from rude passenger drivers for the upcoming Christmas holidays.
Lawmakers from the minority had earlier urged Duterte not to reappoint Tugade for his failure to solve Metro Manila’s traffic woes within 100 days—his own self-imposed timeline—after assuming office.
Tugade has been pushing for Congress to enact Duterte’s proposed measures on emergency powers to resolve traffic, brought about by the lack of resolve from the past administration to address traffic woes in the metropolis where 15 million of the 105 million country’s population live.
Another group calling for his ouster, the Road Users Protection Advocates, accused the Transport chief of condoning 1,316 illegal aliens working at Jack Lam’s online gambling business in Fontana Leisure Park and Casino while still president of the Clark Development Corp. in Pampanga.
Before joining the Duterte Cabinet, Tugade was once CDC president under the past administration.