‘Kayo ang bus ko’

Something has to give, really, in this ongoing squabble over the lowly but indispensable school bus.

Excitedly watching at the sidelines are those companies that import most of the vehicles they sell. They stand to pocket hundreds of millions of pesos in profits out of tens of billions of pesos in potential sales—more than P20 billion, in fact—as a result of the fight.

The protagonists are the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), and a small group of school bus operators calling themselves Acto (Alliance of Concerned Transport Organization).

Last January, the LTFRB raised from the dead a 10-year-old rule, memorandum circular No. 2004-012, limiting the age of any school bus at 15 years.

In 2007, apparently to add teeth to the circular banning the use of school buses that are more than 15 years old, the LTFRB imposed on the school bus operators another cost, which was the “roadworthiness certificate,” to be issued by the same LTFRB.

So, for the past 10 years, the ban existed on paper, just another one of those in the hordes of government rules that would never be enforced, such as this traffic violation called “jaywalking.”

How difficult was it really to get those certificates from the LTFRB with its pliable rules, if you know what I mean.

Suddenly, one fine day in October 2013, the bus operators woke up with the LTFRB deciding that it would finally implement—strictly—the ban on school buses more than 15 years old.

At that time, the LTFRB just had a new boss, Winston Ginez, who was one of the “private” prosecutors that the Aquino (Part II) administration recruited for the impeachment of former Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Incidentally, only a couple of months ago, Ginez reportedly eyed a new position in the administration, possibly as one of the top honchos in the Commission on Elections.

Transport operators reportedly jumped for joy when they heard the news, although the transfer of Ginez did not materialize, unfortunately for them.

Anyway, the actual start of the resurrected ban was originally set for last January. LTFRB even warned then that it would implement the ban even if the operators still had valid “certificates of public convenience.”

Never mind that the LTFRB itself also issued those certificates. And at huge costs to the operators, of course.

In the past few months, however, the operators in the group called ACTO desperately sought a reprieve from the LTFRB, arguing that they would need more time to update their units, citing problems of financing.

Now, for the sake of all the 500,000 or so schoolchildren using school buses, plus their poor harassed parents, who are the “boss” of our leader Benigno Simeon, aka BS, let us do a little math.

By the way, according to another group called the National Association of School Bus Service Operators of the Philippines (NASBSOP), it already has more than 60,000 members nationwide.

Still, ACTO itself estimated that the number of school buses to be affected by the ban would be 30,000 units.

One of the favorite models of the operators is the Mitsubishi L-300 that they convert into air-conditioned school transport painted with the familiar yellow and black stripes.

As a matter of fact, word went around the school bus operators that some guys in the LTFRB were actually recommending the Mitsubishi L-300 model as replacement for their 15-year-old units.

Hmmm … do we smell some commission in the making here?

Anyway, a random check on the Internet showed that a three-year-old Mitsubishi L-300 would cost at least P500,000 per unit, if you are lucky. A brand-new unit of the same model would cost more than P720,000 per unit.

The total cost of the instant ban that the LTFRB, under our heroic Ginez, insisted on imposing on school bus operators, could easily reach P15 billion, if they would just buy secondhand three-year-old units, and more than P22 billion, if they would buy brand-new units.

To top it all, those geniuses at the LTFRB perhaps believed that the Philippines would have some 30,000 vehicles for sale at any one time, which could be converted into school buses at a moment’s notice. You could not even find more than a thousand of those units for sale in all the Mitsubishi dealers.

Also, before you know it, prices of that particular model would have gone through the roof.