SC asked to stop MRT-LRT fare hike

MANILA, Philippines - Two separate Supreme Court cases greeted the implementation of the fare increases in the Light Rail Transit (LRT) and Metro Rail Transit (MRT) on the first working day of the year yesterday.

In separate petitions, the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) and former Iloilo congressman Augusto Syjuco asked the high court to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) or a status quo ante order stopping the fare adjustments, which began last Sunday.

The petitioners also urged the SC to void a Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) order last month allowing the increases.

The two petitioners shared the position that the fare hikes would only benefit the private firms operating the lines and that the move was a violation of the constitutional right to due process of millions of mass transit commuters.

Members of militant groups on Sunday launched mass actions at some MRT and LRT stations to protest the fare hikes.

“The LRT/MRT cannot claim such increases as a matter of right, and the DOTC, or any agency for that matter, cannot grant such increase ex-parte, because any such increase should be based on reasonable grounds to be determined in a quasi-judicial proceeding,” Bayan’s 58-page petition read.

“The secretary of the DOTC simply does not have any conferred authority and there is no available procedure within the DOTC to properly consider the propriety of a fare rate increase for the LRT/MRT,” Bayan said.

Bayan also assailed the lack of publication of the rate increase, a procedure required by law.

Bayan stressed the DOTC “has no authority nor jurisdiction to resolve the fare adjustment/increases of LRT and MRT, especially since both the LRT and MRT are public services and must be subject to regulation, and their fare rate may not be adjusted unilaterally.”

The militant group emphasized only the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) is empowered to decide on fare issues.

The group, through its secretary general Renato Reyes Jr., called the fare hike “unjust and unreasonable” and “patently anti-commuter.”

In his petition, Syjuco pointed out that the DOTC approved the fare adjustment even without the private operators asking for it.

“It is irregular for DOTC to grant these private concessionaires these fare hikes, even without their actually applying for a fare hike, and even without a hearing where they should have presented the bases on why they deserve a fare hike, and the extent of the fare increase,” he said.

Syjuco also argued that the LRT and MRT are a “public utility” and should be subject to “public regulation.”

He argued that no public consultation was made before the fare hike, noting that the Dec. 12 consultation conducted by the DOTC was a presentation of the new fare matrix.

“Given the public interest involved, as spelled by millions of our citizenry availing of the service of our rail transit, proper public hearing should have been undertaken by DOTC before willy-nilly approving the fare increase scheme,” Syjuco said in his petition.

Named respondents in both petitions were DOTC Secretary Jose Emilio Abaya, MRT 3 Office officer-in-charge Renato San Jose, LRT Authority administrator Honorito Chaneco, MRT Corp. and Light Rail Manila Consortium of Ayala and Metro Pacific.

While the SC was still on holiday recess when the petitions were filed, rules allow the Chief Justice to act on urgent petitions and issue relief like TRO or SQA subject to consultation with other justices and affirmation upon resumption of session on Jan. 13.

The DOTC allowed an increase in base fare of P11 for both the LRT and MRT for the first four kilometer, starting Jan. 4, with an additional P1 charge for every kilometer.

Solons vs fare hike

At the House of Representatives, lawmakers asked Malacañang to rescind the fare hikes ahead of a congressional inquiry into the issue beginning Thursday.

Akbayan party-list Rep. Walden Bello and Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon, in separate statements, said the adjustments would be a big burden to LRT and MRT commuters, most of whom belong to the middle- and low-income groups.

Bello said the administration is faithfully performing its contractual obligations to private sector players, but is not living up to its social contract to provide inexpensive, adequate and safe public services to the people.

“With inflation eating at their incomes and some 26-28 per cent of people remaining under the poverty line, the 100 per cent fare increase will mean less to spend for food and shelter for the average urban family,” he said.

Ridon said “higher train fares will directly translate to less food on the table for millions of households.”

“Above-inflation train fare hikes will eat up a significant chunk of a typical Filipino family’s daily budget, quickly leading to a hard-felt domestic crisis in thousands of homes,” he said.

The two lawmakers noted that even the DOTC had admitted that proceeds from the fare increases would not go to the improvement of train services and facilities but to pay off debts.

Bello also said Abaya should not rail against proposals for government subsidies for the LRT and MRT.

“Perhaps he should be faulting the Bureau of Internal Revenue for being ineffective in collecting taxes from the rich and the Department of the Budget for the wrong priorities in budgetary management,” he said.

“With tax revenues coming to only 15 to 17 per cent of GDP – the lowest in Southeast Asia – we urgently need reform in the formulation, legislation and implementation of tax policies,” he added.

Ridon, who is a member of the House committee on transportation, said that for minimum wage earners to cope with the fare increase, they must work at least one hour more each day.

“A minimum wage earner who rides the whole stretch of the MRT or the LRT everyday needs to shell out about P30 more for roundtrip train tickets under the new rates. President Aquino and his Cabinet might sneer at this amount, but our policy-makers must understand that that amount is almost equivalent to an hour’s worth of work,” he said.

Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo, for his part, renewed his appeal to the DOTC for staggered increases in fares.

No transparency

Senate Committee on Finance chairman Francis Escudero, for his part, criticized the DOTC for its lack of transparency in implementing the fare hike.

Escudero noted that the DOTC never mentioned anything about the planned fare increase during the hearings of the chamber on this year’s national budget even though the issues surrounding the MRT-3, LRT-1 and LRT-2 were discussed.

He said that the Senate would have not approved the 2015 budget request of the DOTC had it known that the department would implement fare increases in the mass transit systems.

“They asked for budget allocation from Congress and said that was what they needed. We gave it to them already, but they did not even inform us that there would be an increase. Had we known that there will be a fare hike, we could have given them a smaller amount from the 2015 budget,” he said.

“The reason why this fare increase is such a burden is because the service is not improving. We already allocated money for the MRT rehabilitation and improvement for 2015,” he said. “There is enough funding. We don’t need the money from the fare hike in order to improve MRT3,” he added.

He also chided the DOTC for citing a 2011 hearing on the fare hike issue as proof of the department’s compliance with rules.

“If that is their basis for the hike this 2015, I think that is not fair. They will implement the fare hike four years after the public hearing and they will tell us that that is the public hearing as required by law? I certainly disagree with that logic,” he said.

Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito, for his part, said there was an apparent attempt to mislead the public when the government imposed the MRT/LRT fare hike during the holiday season and just days before the Feast of the Black Nazarene and the visit of Pope Francis.

In a statement, Ejercito said it was heartless for the administration to impose higher fares considering that commuters had to bear poor and even unsafe train services.

He said commuters wouldn’t mind paying more if the LRT and MRT services are excellent like those in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Too late

Had the DOTC implemented the planned improvements in the MRT and LRT as scheduled, rate hikes would not have been necessary, Sen. Nancy Binay said.

She said the P4.5 billion earmarked for the purchase of additional coaches for the MRT-3 ended up instead in other projects under the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

“In 2012, the DOTC surrendered P4.5 billion allocated for purchasing additional cars for the MRT3 to the DAP. Now, the commuters are aghast because the funds that should have been used for the improvement of the service of the MRT are gone,” Binay said.

“If the P4.5 billion was used properly by the DOTC and resulted in the purchase of new trains then most likely there would be no fare increase for the MRT and LRT,” she added.

Binay also questioned the timing of the fare increase, considering that the approved national budget for this year contained allocations for the improvement of Metro Manila’s mass transit systems.

“The recently approved 2015 General Appropriations Act already has a budget of P10.6 billion to improve the country’s railway systems, including the rehabilitation of LRT Lines 1 and 2 and subsidies to MRT,” Binay said.

She added that the recently approved P22.5-billion supplemental budget also includes P2 billion for the rehabilitation and capacity extension of the MRT and LRT.

Protests continue

In anticipation of protest actions, the Eastern Police District deployed anti-riot policemen outside the DOTC head office in Mandaluyong.

“There are technicalities and requirements that the DOTC failed to comply with in announcing the fare hike,” Train Riders Network spokesman James Relativo said. He said the public cannot be faulted for doubting government’s assurance that the fare hikes would result in better MRT and LRT services.

“We have seen and tested this time and time again – the fare increase wouldn’t ensure better services,” he said.

“The mass railway system’s direction of privatization has incurred so much debt that the chunk of government subsidy is actually going to the private sector, and not to actual maintenance,” he added.

A group opposed to the fare increase has also launched a “selfie protest” against the fare increase.

“The selfie protest is just the online aspect of the massive disapproval of the Filipino people against this anti-people policy being implemented for the benefit of private companies,” #StrikeTheHike Network spokesman Mark Louie Aquino said.

“Not even a single centavo of increase for the MRT and LRT is unjustifiable as its service to the riding public remains poor,” he added.

Make them pay

For a coalition of labor groups, the government should have gone after private contractors that messed up the operations of the MRT instead of penalizing commuters with higher fares.

“Liabilities borne out of an onerous contract should not be passed on to consumers, penalizing them in effect as in the case of the Build-Lease-Transfer (BLT) contract with the Metro Rail Transit Corporation (MRTC) that built the MRT3 in 1997,” Gerry Rivera of the Philippine Airlines Employees Association (PALEA) and Partido Manggagawa (PM) said.

He said adjusting fares is tantamount to rewarding private concessionaires with “steady flow of income from the fare hike shouldered by lowly-paid workers.”

Rivera noted that with the new rates, ordinary workers who take the MRT would have to shell out at least P8,000 yearly to cover the fare hike.

Josua Mata, secretary general of Sentro ng Nagkakaisang Manggagawa, said the government should rescind its contract with the train system’s operators and take over operations.

“When the government takes money from commuters through a fare hike and transfers that money to fraudulent hands of private companies, that is not subsidy. That’s malady,” he said. –Marvin Sy, Paolo Romero, Christina Mendez, Sheila Crisostomo, Janvic Mateo, Non Alquitran, Rhodina Villanueva