A Caloocan City court on Tuesday ordered the release of an elderly jeepney driver who was arrested last week for supposedly disobeying authorities during a protest.
Judge Gloria Santos of Caloocan City Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 51 ordered the Caloocan City police to release Elmer Cordero after the detainee posted the P10,000 bond.
The 72-year-old man was arrested last week along with 5 other jeepney drivers for disobedience to authority when they allegedly refused to stop protesting on EDSA. They were asking for government aid and permission for jeepney drivers to ply the roads.
Judge Santos ordered the release despite an earlier statement by Palace spokesperson Harry Roque that Cordero still have to face an estafa case which needed to be ‘fixed.’
The Caloocan Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 52 Acting Executive Judge Dorothy Grace Daguna-Inciong allowed the six arrested jeepney drivers to post bail of P3,000 each.
“Charges filed against an individual must be faced “regardless of age,” Roque had said, adding Cordero was not only being detained for allegedly breaching quarantine protocols during a recent protest in Caloocan but because of pending cases in court.
However, Roque said that Cordero will undergo due process, adding that if there is no evidence, the case will be dismissed.
“We will look into it because regardless of your age, if you have a pending case, you need to face the charges. There will only be clemency if he is found guilty. There is a provision that the court can recommend pardon or parole to senior citizens,” Roque said.
Roque, meawhile, said the government is planning to use jeepneys for delivery services.
Roque said that Transportation Secretary Tugade proposed plans to utilize jeepneys as delivery service because they are not still allowed to be used for passengers due to lack of physical distancing.
Roque has previously said that allowing traditional jeepney’s deployment on the roads remains out of the question, and pointed to the possibility of hiring jeepney drivers as COVID-19 contact tracers.
Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto on Tuesday said that if the government wants to restart the economy, PUV drivers must restart their engines.
“There are three important T’s today: tests, trabaho, transportasyon. Screening for coronavirus is no longer a requisite for returning to work. But without a ride, there is no work. And no work, no pay,” Recto said.
He added that allowing workplaces to open without providing the people with the means to go thereis like telling the President he can now cross the Pasig River from his residence to his office for as long he does not ride any boats.
“That, today, is the sink-or-swim situation for the nation’s breadwinners.”
For starters, Recto said that the government can ease the brutal transportation lack by allowing husband-and-wife to ride a motorcycle in tandem.
“If they share the same bed at night, why can’t they ride a bike together during the day?”
Recto said this should also accelerate the setting up of safe bike lanes and the mass distribution of bicycles to workers.
He said bike lanes are not complex, sunk-in-the-ground infra projects.
“And bikes are CBU, off-the-shelf items, unlike a new train which must undergo tedious procurement.”
“Allow jeepney and UV drivers—who have turned their fare boxes into begging bowls—to ply the roads again, subject to health conditions.”
“But they can go out and pasada again only if we partly subsidize the seats that we are compelling them to keep vacant. Running half-empty at the same old fares, further reduced for students and seniors, will be the final nail in their coffins.”
Recto also said that there should be more buses for they are the tickets out of temporary unemployment.
He said subsidy is not an alien practice in mass transport.
“We’re subsidizing MRT to the tune of P6 billion this year. So if they’ll be running at 10% capacity, the 90% farebox loss will be covered by the taxpayer subsidy. “
“The same is true with PNR. For this year, we have given it P1.86 billion in subsidy, seven times bigger than its farebox collection, which in 2018 was P255 million, half of its payroll and operating expense of P504 million that year,” he added.
The Senate-approved bill reauthorizing the Bayanihan Act earmarks P17 billion for bike lanes, sidewalks, bicycles and other things which form the foundation of a national bicycle infrastructure. That amount includes test runs for a “service contracting scheme” for PUVs.
“We hope that the above can be implemented sans the sequel of a Bayanihan Act. We are at the point in the pandemic that, to paraphrase Deng, it no longer matters if the jeep is black or white, for as long it carries people.”
