FILIPINO FOCUS
Vol. XVI
No. 5
June 2004
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Paying The Price
TRICYCLE DRIVERS' LIVELIHOOD THREATENED
MANY CATHOLICS IN THE PHILIPPINES USUALLY ATTEND THE SUNDAY MASS, BUT NOT PEDRITO BERNAL AND MOST FELLOW TRICYCLE DRIVERS.
For them Sunday is one more workday to earn enough to feed their families, Bernal said.
"Weekend" for them means any day of the week after 10 p.m. "That is our only time to be with our families. We work long hours, otherwise we won't have money for food, rent and children's schooling," Bernal explained.
Preoccupied
When things
are slow, he and about a dozen other members of the Loyola Heights Tricycle
Drivers' Association he heads hang out under a tree in Loyola Heights,
Quezon City, northeast of Manila..jpg)
Since early March they have become preoccupied with the implications of an impending law to implement the 1999 Clean Air Act.
The law centers on the causes of pollution in the metropolitan areas around four major cities -- Manila, Baguio in the north, central Cebu City and Davao City in the south. It mandated the phaseout of two-stroke motorcycles by the end of 2002.
However, a tricycle drivers' protest in January 2003 in front of Malacañang presidential office prompted President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to extend a moratorium on the law's implementation.
Major mode of transport
The tricycle, a motorcycle with a covered sidecar, is a major mode of transport in city streets and on provincial highways. Maria Teresa Oliva of the Miriam College Environmental Sciences Institute estimates there are 1.7 million tricycle owners and 3 million drivers in the country.
After the 14 month moratorium, advocates revived the call to implement the law at a Feb. 26 Media and Public Policy Forum at Jesuit Ateneo Professional School, southeast of Manila.
Leading the call, House Representative Nereus Acosta Jr. noted that the national treasury still has not released money to implement the law that took 12 years to get approved. In the meantime, he said, the nation pays US$500 million a year for sickness and lost work caused by polluted air in the four metropolitan areas.
Acosta said the two-stroke engines of many tricycles spew 20 times more pollutants into the air than a passenger car. Their engines burn gasoline as well as a mixture of two-stroke oil (2T oil) that thickens exhaust fumes. These fumes, he said, possess lead, which causes pulmonary and breathing illnesses.
Modern four-stroke motorcycle engines burn only gasoline and use unleaded fuel. They emit less pollution than their two-stroke predecessors.<WM
UCAN
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