Various transport groups on Friday announced that they are "all systems go" for the Metro Manila-wide strike scheduled on March 11 to protest the escalating cost of petroleum products and the lack of political will on the part of the government to come up with a single ticketing system.
The various, conflicting and competing traffic citation tickets being imposed on poor public transport drivers both by the national and local governments is bleeding the drivers of their already dwindling income brought about by high oil prices due to the
abusive cartel pricing of the big three oil firms in connivance with the Arroyo government through stubborn its refusal to regulate the local oil prices and industry and its refusal to lift the 12% EVAT on oil products," said George San Mateo, secretary general of the group Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (PISTON).
San Mateo blamed the Arroyo government for its silence and lack of political will to rein in the proliferation and abuse of LGU's own traffic citation tickets.
"The LGU's learned the tricks-of-the-trade of using government services such as traffic enforcement from the Arroyo administration's lateral attrition law of converting the entire government bureaucracy for money-making and revenue-generation purposes. All these led to wide-spread corruption from the national government level down to the local government. This is the result of bureaucrat-capitalism which is the use of government power like a business enterprise with the sole purpose of appropriating private profit for some small groups and individuals," San Mateo explained.