Transportation in the Philippines

The rising price of gas has created a crisis in transportation here in Manila. In some ways this crisis parallels the situation in Vancouver as the rising cost of transportation swallows even more of the income of working class people, tightening already tight budgets and pushing those at the margins towards poverty.

However there is an added dimension here in the Manila that arises from the reality of a very low rate of private car ownership, and thus reliance on various forms ‘mass’ transport. This mass transport system is almost entirely privately owned and operated, and even the light rail system, which is owned by the government, is run based on a market, user-pay logic.

Manila’s transportation system has been held up by some neoliberal transportation commentators as a model of free market transportation, with the “invisible hand” creating an amazing transportation network amid chaos. Indeed from a birds-eye view the network of jeepny, pedicabs (motorized and non-motorized tricycles), diesel buses, and taxis connecting to the several jam-packed light rail lines has a certain poetry to it.

The reality on the ground is anything but poetic. Take the romantic jeepny, the poster child of Manila transport. These transportation workhorses can pack in 12 – 18 passengers along two benches with two or more people sitting up front with the driver, all in a vehicle about the size of a small mini-van. Windows are open so that passengers and driver are exposed to all the pollution of the congested Manila streets. That means clouds of exhaust billow in as you sit and wait at a clogged and chaotic intersection.

While the fare is low (starting at 8.00 Philippine pisos) the short, convoluted routes mean frequent transfers, each one with a new fare. That’s because each jeepny is owner operated so there is no planning of the system, and each driver needs to choose a route where they can maximize the fares for each run.

The drivers’ work all day in the blazing sun, calculating fares and giving change as the fares are passed up hand along the row of passengers. And although the minimum fare is regulated the drivers are lucky if they make 150.00 – 200.00 pisos (about $5) per day once fuel and maintenance costs for vehicles are factored in.

Meanwhile, those who do not own a car and rely on these forms of transportation, basically the entire working class and a significant proportion of the middle class, end up paying a significant proportion of their income on transportation. One of the organizers at the NGO we are working with here in the Philippines, spends 100 pisos on her daily commute. In a context where about 30% of the population subsists on less than $1 (42 pisos) per day and the take home pay of a nurse is as little as 8,000 per month, that kind of expenditure for transportation is significant and prohibitive.

With the rapid increase in gas prices there has been a great debate on how best to deal with the rising costs for the tens of thousands of owner-operators in the transportation sector. The government, which regulates fares, has characterized this as a balance between the needs of transportation workers and the needs of the ‘transportation’ consumer.

This shell game is possible because of the privatized nature of the transportation sector, and the minimal role of role of the government in providing for this necessary public service. As one organizer put it to me, it’s really everyone (drivers and riders) against the oil companies, who have continued to post huge monopoly profits right through the ‘crisis’.

Recognizing this underlying class struggle, PISTON, a progressive union of jeepny drivers has called for the elimination of the Value Added Tax (VAT) on fuel and for the government to regulate oil prices instead of a fare increase. Last week PISTON staged a one day strike, with the support of BAYAN, the broad alliance of progressive forces, which stopped traffic at key intersections in Manila and other cities. Unfortunately the strike did not have the impact it might have because other transportation unions, which had originally intended to participate, pulled out at the last minute cowed by police intimidation and red-baiting.

Nonetheless more struggles can be expected in this area, unless gas prices spontaneously free fall, which seems highly unlikely. The government policy of small fare increases is unlikely to placate either drivers or passengers, neither of whom can afford this kind of squeeze on their income. Meanwhile, actions like the one taken by PISTON will continue to highlight that there is no neoliberal ‘market’ solution to the crisis and point the finger at the government’s priorities of pleasing foreign investors and financing a repressive counter-insurgency rather than meeting people’s basic needs.

The Rural Dimension

The impact of high fuel costs is also felt in the countryside, but here there is an added dimension. In the name of achieving energy self-sufficiency the Department of Energy is phasing in a 10% mandatory biofuel content. The requirement is a boon to the sugar industry which is the main source of biofuel here, but anything but a boon for poor farmers living in sugar producing regions.

With limited market for Philippine sugar in recent years sugar producing areas like the island of Negros had seen some limited land redistribution under the (misnamed) Comprehensive Agricultural Reform Program (CARP). While the CARP was vastly inadequate, it did allow for some small farmers to secure a piece of land, albeit with considerable debt. Now with the reinvigorated domestic market for sugar as biofuel, the big plantation owners are once again reconsolidating farms, using the leverage of debt, as well as an amenable military, to absorb the smaller farms. Meanwhile the farmers and their families are forced back into a long standing semi-feudal relationship of dependence on the local big landlords.