Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan on Thursday called for an investigation into what the Commission on Audit described as “slow implementation” of the Land Transportation Franchising Regulatory Board’s service contracting program for displaced transport workers.
Several other senators also decried the LTFRB’s failure to deliver on the terms of the service contract intended as a temporary livelihood for PUV drivers.
Pangilinan has proposed Senate Resolution 861 that directs the appropriate Senate Committee to look into the 1.07 percent utilization of the total P5.58 billion budget of LTFRB for their Service Contracting Program.
In its 2020 report, COA flagged the LTFRB for the delays in implementing the program.
The audit commission also revealed that only 49.79 percent or a total of 29,871 drivers of the 60,000 targeted driver-participants were registered in the program at the end of 2020.
Senator Grace Poe condemned the “dismal” rollout of the service contracting program by the LTFRB under the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act or Republic Act 11494.
“It is lamentable that the government simply shrugged its shoulders over its inability to disburse payments to our operators under the service contracting program,” said Poe, chairperson of the Senate committee on public services.
Poe had filed a resolution (unnumbered) seeking an inquiry into the slow implementation of the service contracting program, which she earlier pushed to be included in Bayanihan 2 to help give livelihood to drivers who were left without income amid the pandemic.
“We had hoped that the provision of assistance to PUV drivers would be given the express lane treatment. Instead, it got stuck in bureaucratic gridlock,” said Poe.
Senator Nancy Binay for expressed disappointment over the government’s lack of effort to fast track the implementation of the Service Contracting Program for PUV drivers.
She noted that DOTr and the LTFRB are invisible, and have become the single-biggest job stranglers since the start of the pandemic. “Lef us give them a little dignity. We barred them from pyling their route and yet, we are not giving them financial aid,” Binay said, referring to the PUV drivers.
“It’s more than a year, but the distribution of much-needed cash assistance has hardly improved,” she said.
Participating drivers and operators decried their failure to receive due compensation for the services they rendered under the program.
LTFRB Chairman Martin Delgra said in a recent interview that they have disbursed P1.25 billion or 26.55 percent of the P5.58-billion allotted for payouts last June.
According to the transport coalition Move As One, there are at least 2.7 million land transport workers whose jobs have been at risk since the start of the pandemic. More than half of the workers are drivers, conductors, and freight handlers.
The LTFRB issued a statement that a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the transport agency and the Landbank of the Philippines (LBP) was signed only in December 2020, which governs the distribution of cash subsidies to eligible beneficiaries.
It said that the 1 percent utilization rate only covers the implementation month of December 2020.
The transport agency further clarified that as of June 30, 2021, P1.5 billion was released to the beneficiary drivers and for the procurement of the systems manager.
Recently, the COA noted that the LTFRB utilized only P59.72 million or 1.07 percent of the P5.58-billion appropriation under the law.
Poe also bewailed the findings of the COA that the release of the service contracting program was delayed by 11 months. In addition, only 2,125 of 60,000 target beneficiaries were on boarded to the LTFRB’s dashboard.
“We can’t just sit and watch as our ‘kings of the road’ who have always rushed to the rescue of stranded commuters have now become beggars on the streets with no one to look after them,” stressed Poe.