Lance, Bricxie Dayne A.

As Philippines scraps jeepney buses, operators struggle with costs

Manila – Brightly painted jeepney public transport trucks are an iconic symbol of the
Philippines, but minibus firm boss Freddie Hernandez backs plans to force them off the
road.

He was among the first transport operators to comply with government orders to phase
out the beloved but elderly utility vehicles and replace them with safer, greener buses.

“We saw the benefits of modernizing our units in terms of reducing their carbon
emissions,” said Hernandez, the chair of a transport service cooperative in Metro
Manila, an urban sprawl of 16 cities.

“If the environment benefits from it, the public will benefit from it as well in the long run.”

Other public transport leaders, however, say the program is saddling them with
unmanageable costs and will upend the livelihood of some 61,000 traditional jeepney
drivers, as they face a looming deadline to modernize their fleets.

Jeepney minitrucks were originally created from abandoned U.S. military jeeps after
World War II, and later reproduced by Filipinos to meet Manila’s transport needs.

The open-air minibuses, which are festooned with bright decorations, pictures and
slogans, are commonly known as the “Kings of the Road” and are the most popular
form of public transport in the country.

But they have been pinpointed as a major pollution source, accounting for almost half of
airborne particulate matter in the Metro Manila region, according to a 2018 study by the
National Center for Transportation Studies at the University of the Philippines.
In 2017, the transport ministry ordered jeepneys age 15 years or older to be replaced
with modern vehicles imported from neighboring Asian countries such as Japan and
China.

The government has extended an initial deadline of March 2020 three times due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, but on Feb. 21 it announced operators must comply by June 30,
or risk losing their franchise to operate.

Transport operators said the program is pushing them into debt through hefty loans and
maintenance issues, and have urged officials to rethink their plans.

A spokesperson for the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board

(LTFRB), the program’s implementing agency, said it was supporting jeepney operators
with subsidies toward new vehicles. Those giving up their transport franchises would get
“social support,” he said, such as free skills training and other work opportunities.

The agency has also said it is asking government banks to speed up loan approvals.

Despite backing the plan, Hernandez said his cooperative is struggling with the upgrade
costs, which come as they reel from a decline in passengers due to the pandemic and
high fuel prices.

One modern jeepney in his fleet normally earns 6,000 pesos ($110) per day for a 12-km
route.

But diesel consumption alone averages 2,500 pesos daily, he said, leaving them with
only about 3,500 to pay for the loans, salaries and maintenance.
Painful upgrade costs
So far, 60% of the 185,000 elderly jeepneys have been replaced, said LTFRB head
Teofilo Guadiz III.

“We do not want any of them to be left behind,” he said.

With the initiative driving down the value of jeepneys, drivers and operators are now
forced to sell their cherished buses at dirt cheap prices, or for 20,000 to 30,000 pesos at
scrap firms.

The government’s approved list of replacement buses, meanwhile, cost as much as 2.8
million pesos each.

At the start of the program, the government offered 80,000-peso subsidies toward
upgrades. Despite doubling the subsidy in 2020, the cost remains too steep for many
jeepney owners.

To qualify for government bank loans and subsidies, drivers and small-time operators
must join or form cooperatives or corporations, which will own both the buses and their
public franchises to operate.

Bus operator Ricardo Rebano said his corporation took out a 34-million-peso loan from
the state-operated bank to pay for 15 modern jeepneys, but it was now struggling to
meet repayments and interest on top of fuel costs and workers’ salaries.

“The cost is too much; it’s already hurting us,” said Rebano, who is also president of the
Federation of Jeepney Operators and Drivers Association of the Philippines, a group
advocating for transport workers’ rights and welfare.

Worse still, he said, the imported new buses had developed engine, air con and
transmission problems.
“(The supplier) doesn’t immediately respond to our issues. So, the broken units will
remain unused and unprofitable,” he said.

“How can we pay our loans if the situation is like this?”

Transport unions urge rethink

Even the new buses’ parts are controlled by big corporations and are more expensive to
replace, said Mody Floranda, leader of Piston, one of the largest associations of
jeepney drivers in the country.

For small-time operators, he said, this could spell more loans and the risk of bankruptcy.

Philippine trade unions said the modernization program will result in their “wholesale
disenfranchisement” in a report last month to the U.N.’s International Labour
Organization.

They described it as a form of state violence toward informal passenger transport

workers who have a hand-to-mouth existence.

In a 2021 position paper on jeepney modernization, the Move As One Coalition, a group
of Filipino sustainable mobility advocates and researchers, also urged “a just and
socially inclusive path” to improving public transport services.

With the upgrade program under scrutiny, transport workers urged the government to
rethink.

“We are not against modernization,” said Floranda.

“Why can’t the government support local manufacturers to come up with cheaper
transport units instead of importing costly and outdated models from other countries?”