ADMINISTRATION standard-bearer Manuel Roxas II on Thursday rejected survey front-runner Grace Poe’s accusations he is incompetent for failing to solve the gridlock in Metro Manila and for allowing the Metro Rail Transit to deteriorate when he was Transport secretary.
“We need to get to the root of the problem and solve the problem and not just paint it over with some make-up, with some placard and streamers,” Roxas told a forum hosted by the Filipino alumni of Ivy League schools in the United States.
“I’m confident that we have done all that we can do given what we could do at that time. You come across a problem, you fix it and you solve it.”
Poe had slammed Roxas for failing to be “a competent manager for the job” of Transportation chief at the same forum, adding Roxas lacked “compassion for the people.”
“I think that your output and accomplishments should speak for themselves,” Poe said.
“I’ve been very fair in the hearings I’ve conducted with the DoTC. Of course, Secretary Mar was the DoTC secretary preceding this one and we know we have some questions about what happened during his term.
Poe said Roxas could have done more during his stint as Transport chief.
“I think more could have been done. I think that our people deserved better,” Poe said.
“And I think that it’s really a matter of vision, planning and execution and leadership that could have spelled the difference.”
Poe, who led the Senate public services sub-panel inquiry on the MRT’s last year, criticized the long queues at the MRT stations that the commuting public endured daily and and still does and blamed Roxas for its “dilapidated” state.
“From a reputable contractor like the Japanese firm Sumitomo, it [the MRT] was transferred to PH Trams and APT Global. And the contract was signed, if I’m not mistaken, less than two weeks after Secretary Abaya got appointed,” Poe said in early November.
Roxas, who held the Transportation portfolio from 2011 to 2012 before moving to the Interior Department following the death of Jesse Robredo, was mainly responsible for the government’s review of the MRT’s maintainer.
Roxas said the government was doing “everything” to save the MRT by buying it from its original contractors whom he claimed were the ones taking advantage of the riding public.