Farmer collaboration in port decongestion

To benefit themselves and their fellow Filipinos, farmers must collaborate with other sectors. This was seen recently in the farmers’ struggle to ease port congestion.

The losses from port congestion have been estimated by the Joint House Committees on Transportation and Metro Manila Development to be P2.5 billion a day. Part of these losses have impoverished thousands of farmers, whose perishable products have rotted because of delayed shipments.

The Alyansa Agrikultura decided it had to collaborate with other sectors to advance their interests, as well as the nation’s.

The first step was to collaborate with the legislators by testifying at the Senate and the House of Representatives hearings. Together with other sectors, they complimented the government’s initiatives to address this difficult problem and suggested additional measures to consider.

The second step was to analyze the problem. The farmers identified three parts of the problem where they knew they had to collaborate with other sectors to help improve the deteriorating situation: truck ban, port congestion and truck availability.

Truck ban

The Alyansa met with former President and current Mayor Joseph Estrada. Explaining the truck ban’s impact on poor farmers added to the picture presented by the government and the small and medium enterprises as to the hard choice that had to be made between saving jobs and inconveniencing the public. Estrada chose a balance that favored saving jobs.

When the Alyansa asked why Estrada would risk the criticism of Manila voters who were benefiting from the decreased traffic resulting from the truck ban, he replied that he did it “for the greater good of the greater number.” We hope that the other city officials follow his lead.

The farmers then collaborated with the leaders of three largest trucker organizations: CTAP’s Albert Suansing, ACTOO’s Ricky and Rina Rapa, and INTA’s Teddy Garbasio. They jointly submitted a guideline that they believed was consistent with the Cabinet’s direction to the MMDA for consideration: “As a national policy, the general rule is 24/7 free access for all national roads, subject to MMDA regulations and implementation.”

Since the truck ban was lifted, preliminary results have been very impressive. Port congestion has decreased significantly. Partial but verified reports have shown that incoming and outgoing cargo to and from the ports have increased by 21.5 percent and 19.5 percent, respectively. With more cargo movement, farmers’ produce have a much better chance of getting delivered on time.

Port congestion

While lifting the truck ban has increased the movement at the ports, there are still many containers emptied of their imported contents with no place to go because of the congested port and container yards.

Recently, some irresponsible shipping lines have abdicated the responsibility of securing temporary storage places for these empty containers. This means that a truck that has to wait for as long as four days waiting for a place to unload an empty container cannot be used to transport farmer produce. Thus, the farm products rot.

Last Sept. 21, the Alyansa collaborated with importers and exporters to bring a global shipping expert to a meeting where they will meet representatives of shipping lines to formulate a solution to this major problem. This expert will identify countries where shipping lines that do not take care of their empty containers are penalized by the cancellation of their business permits.

The Alyansa is asking the Department of Trade and Industry to look into this issue, because DTI has been very successful in coming up with win-win solutions for cases like this.

Truck availability

Even if the first two problems are solved, the desired transport of agricultural goods will not occur unless there are enough trucks to do the job. The Alyansa is collaborating with the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB) to conduct a time and motion study to determine how the Oct. 17 franchising deadline can still be met without decreasing the number of available trucks.

This builds on an earlier activity the Alyansa did with the LTFRB. This was when the processing time for the “Last Mile” project to motivate weekend deliveries was decreased from 12 minutes to 1 minute through LTFRB guidance. Though the Alyansa believes there should be no franchising of trucks that are not public utilities, they nevertheless want the process streamlined. This way, bureaucratic procedures will not decrease truck availability.

The farmers are the lifeblood of our country. They constitute our largest but poorest sector. They will remain this way unless they learn to collaborate with other sectors.

(The author is chair of Agriwatch, former secretary for presidential flagship programs and projects, and former undersecretary for Agriculture, and Trade and Industry. For inquiries and suggestions, e-mail [email protected] or telefax 8522112.)