Time to truly professionalize
The viral video showing lascivious remarks and advances by a passenger jeepney driver towards his female passenger brings to light the question - should the government truly professionalize drivers of public utility vehicles?
Here in the Philippines, getting a driver's license is not at all difficult, even a "professional" one. All you have to do is apply and you have it. There is no real test if one is qualified to drive a public utility vehicle, and if ever there is one, it is so easily circumvented by bureaucracy and corruption.
A few hundred pesos, or even a casual acquaintance in the LTO gets you the license you require. I haven't heard anyone undergo a vehicle proficiency test for public utility drivers.
There should be a program where applicants wanting to become public utility drivers undergo a seminar, actual training, and certification before being given a license. In the case of the lascivious driver, he was merely recommended by another driver to the operator of the jeepney. In the proposed program, employers must be presented with the required license and certification that he has indeed gone through the required process. Perhaps a tie-up with TESDA would work. Remember these are public service oriented jobs, where the safety of passengers is a priority, something that is all too often overlooked.
Public utility drivers should also be presentable. A clean shirt, not a "kamiseta," would suffice. There are some drivers who are practically half-naked while driving. If some cities are already starting to arrest those without shirts in public, why not do the same to drivers? And they should be wearing appropriate footwear for driving, not slippers and God forbid, bare-footed. This is simply a safety issue. With the rainy season coming up, wet pedals pose a danger of slippage, so the appropriate footwear is mandatory.
The driver's behavior in the viral video is not only unacceptable, it is reprehensible. He surfaced a few days after the video hit the net, and initially denied everything. He was merely reminding the female passenger to secure her phone because of possible snatchers in the area, and his lip-smacking was because his lips were dry. Right. But when asked if he made lascivious comments, he admitted, thereby throwing out whatever innocent explanation he initially provided. A woman would not jump out of a moving vehicle without good reason. And for a woman, being seated next to a pervert is a good reason to jump.
A case will be filed against the driver. His license has since been cancelled, and the operator's vehicle suspended. But do we need to wait for situations such as this before appropriate measures are placed to ensure the riding public's safety, especially for women?
How many incidents have occurred where drivers of taxis were abusive and mistreating women? Thank God for camera phones. I can only imagine how many cases such as the above have occurred unrecorded.
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