City firm on campaign vs. colorum vehicles

By May 21, 2017Inside News, News

THE transport groups in the Dagupan City and the National Center for Commuters Safety and Protection (NCCSP) are standing squarely behind the city government’s campaign against colorum commuter vehicles plying the city’s streets.

They manifested their support during a forum on the problems posed by increasing presence of the colorum vehicles in the city called by Sanggunian Panlungsod’s committees on Laws, Ordinances and Judiciary and Transportation and Public Utilities, (chaired by City Councilors Jose Netu Tamayo and Alvin Coquia, respectively) and the Public Order and Safety Office (POSO) last Wednesday, May 17.

POSO Chief Carlito Ocampo reported that his office already apprehended drivers of 50 commuter vans and jeepneys that continue to operate without designated terminals in the city.

NCCSP president Elvira Medina deplored the operations of colorum vehicles since they risk the lives of passengers without adequate protection and worse, are not accountable by operating illegally whose drivers continue to drive with expired licenses, run using tampered plates or operating out of franchised line approved by the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board.

Mayor Belen T. Fernandez, who was present in that meeting, said the campaign against colorum operators or vehicles was launched to protect commuters in the city against colorum operations of public transport units.

She said the colorum operations of commuter vans and jeepney have been tolerated for so long that she decided to have the POSO enforcers deputized by the Land Transportation Office to finally stop their illegal presence in the city’s streets.

She added she restored the use of traffic lights to put some order in the flow of traffic in the city and the colorum vehicles that don’t operate with terminals make a mockery of the city’s traffic ordinances.

Technically, a colorum vehicle is a privately-owned motor vehicle that operates as a public utility vehicle without proper authority from the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).

But a franchised public utility vehicle is deemed operating as a colorum if it operates “outside its approved route without prior permit from the LTFRB, ” or if it operates differently from its “authorized denomination”, or when it continues to operate even when its certificate of public convenience (CPC) is suspended or cancelled and the order of suspension or cancellation is executor; when its CPC is expired and continues to operate without a pending application for extension of validity “timely filed” before the LTFB.

For this, Tamayo and Coquia said they will pass an ordinance to protect the commuters against colorum vehicles and to consider a new route for PUVs to the new growth areas identified under the city’s newly approved Comprehensive Land Use Plan. (With report from CIO/JCB)

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