In road daylight

A few days ago the company called Manila North Tollways Corp. launched the second segment of its P12-billion project known as the “port connector road,” linking the congested Manila port area with NLEx—yes, the North Luzon Expressway.

A company in the Metro Pacific group of MVP (Manuel V. Pangilinan), MNTC actually operates NLEx. We all know that NLEx is the one and only highway between Metro Manila and the crop-rich northern Luzon. Really, NLEx is a critical infrastructure.

The company actually split the connector road into two phases: The 2.4-kilometer stretch from NLEx to the McArthur Highway in Valenzuela, and from there the 5.6-kilometer mostly elevated road all the way to the port area. The P1.7-billion first phase is scheduled to be operational this July and the bigger P10.5-billion segment is targeted for completion in 2016, or hopefully still during the term of our dear leader Benigno Simeon, aka BS.

Through the connector road, anyway, MNTC obviously wanted to link NLEx—directly—with the cargo-heavy clientele in the port area, possibly also as a way to decongest traffic in some parts of Metro Manila.

For one, based on MNTC estimates, the connector road can actually accommodate at least 30,000 cargo trucks daily, and at present the daily volume in North Harbor comes up to only about 12,000 trucks. According to MNTC president and CEO Rodrigo Franco, the connector road can actually ease traffic in Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela, not to mention specific sites such as the Balintawak-Cubao stretch of Edsa.

To think, MNTC is spending only about P12 billion for the two phases of such a key road project, even considering the high cost of the elevated portion running above the train tracks of the Philippine National Railway. What a blessing it will be for the traffic-weary commuters in Metro Manila!

Like it or not, the answer to the traffic problem in the metropolis has always been the construction of new roads and new infrastructure—you know, things like elevated roads, light rails, tunnels and flyovers. Yet almost four years into the Aquino (Part II) administration, with only about two years left in the term of our dear leader BS, we have yet to enjoy the sight of even just a single major infrastructure designed to ease our suffering.

So far the MMDA still espouses the wrong approach that we can actually solve our enormous traffic problem, only by reducing the number of vehicles in the streets through the so-called unified vehicular volume reduction program, or the UVVRP. Studies already showed that the program did not work. It only served to increase the traffic volume on the roads in the metropolis because it encouraged people to buy more vehicles to avoid the “number coding,” thus tying up more capital into vehicles that otherwise could have gone to other means of production. It eventually became an anti-poor program, precisely because only the moneyed class could afford to buy more and more vehicles.

Recently, the City of Manila followed the example of the MMDA by banning cargo trucks in broad daylight, thinking perhaps that its ordinance would not serve to paralyze thousands of businesses. In only two days of the truck ban in Manila, according to reports, the Port of Manila and the Manila International Container Port already registered losses of P273 million and P217 million, respectively.

Here is another worry: the Philippine Economic Zone Authority reported that some 800 export companies, employing more than 200,000 workers, also posted losses of $77 million a day since Manila imposed the truck ban.

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Quietly without fanfare in the past few months, the PCSO has been shipping hundreds of thousands of emergency kits and packages of relief goods to various areas in the Visayas devastated by Super Typhoon Yolanda. We also know that the agency already announced that it would shoulder the hospital expenses of the Yolanda victims who were confined in public hospitals and healthcare facilities.

Those things might not be surprising at all because they were actually the job of the PCSO, based at least on its mandate. But the thing is this: PCSO chair Margie Juico has been going hands-on in the PCSO program to help the typhoon victims. I heard that she personally went around the Visayas to talk to local officials to find out how the agency could help the victims most effectively. Last week, for instance, Juico held dialogues with local officials of Palawan, who actually requested medicines and ambulances—more than the usual relief operations.

From what I gathered, the agency also remitted some P12 billion in taxes to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, or P10.5 billion in documentary stamp taxes plus some P1.7 billion in deficiency taxes of past management of the PCSO.

By the way, as a policy under the Aquino (Part II) administration, the PCSO wanted to be up-to-date in its tax payments, which was hardly the case in many other government outfits, particularly those government corporations involved in the pork barrel scams.

Anyway, the Civil Service Commission recently cited the PCSO for “excellent public service,” after a year of survey done by the commission among all government offices.

Actually, the commission included all the 17 branches and offices of the PCSO, with 14 of them receiving positive ratings and two with “excellent” rating, namely, the Lung Center satellite unit and the Tarlac provincial office.