By Ermin Garcia Jr.

 

THERE is one law about the use of the highways by tricycles, motorcycles, and yes, kuliglig, that apparently most if not all motorists are aware of. Not even the police seem to be aware of it because the law, reinforced by a memorandum DILG Secretary Delfin Año is not being enforced in all towns (except in Lingayen?).

DILG Memorandum Circular 036 was issued in 2020 mandating all cities and towns to ban tricycles, pedicabs and kuliglig and other slow moving vehicles including bicycles and motorcycles along the highways.

In some towns and cities where there are highways with four lanes, the regulation was calibrated to allow the slow moving vehicles on the highways provided these do not run on center lanes but on the extreme right lanes.

That’s where we are on this law, largely ignored by mayors, and worse, by DILG itself after threatening the mayors with severe administrative penalties for non-compliance!  The DILG memorandum even directed mayors to form task forces to regulate and monitor compliance.

Could it be that the local DILG directors and PNP regional/provincial directors decided to unilaterally ignore Sec. Año on this? Let’s hope the BBM presidency’s DILG administration under incoming Sec. Benhur Abalos will be more consistent in demanding compliance.

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MOTORISTS CAN HELP.  If the mayors and police chiefs are not keen on enforcing the law, the motorists can still help create awareness towards its existence and need for compliance, particularly on 4-lane highways in the province.

All it needs is for motorists to blow their horns to alert tricycles hugging the center lanes to move to the extreme right lane and allow 4-12 wheeled vehicles to get past them.

I do this. I blow my horn in staccato and the tricycles running at 40kph on the center lane eventually move to the extreme right after being made aware that they are obstructing flow of traffic. I don’t stop honking my horn until the tricycle moves out of the way.  (But patience is needed on two lane highways).

It’s the only way the tricycle drivers and motorcycle riders can be made aware of the law that specifies their limitations on the road.

Speaking of limitations and regulations, there are already thousands of tricycles operating in urban cities and towns but not a single town/city has an ordinance regulating their conduct on the streets and highways.

For instance, tricycle drivers (and motorcycle riders) believe they are exempted from observing one-way streets neither are they expected to observe No-U turns and No-Parking for vehicles.  Worse, there are no efforts to check if the tricycle driver has a permit to drive a unit yet he’s expected to observe standard traffic rules.

The incoming set of councilors can make their mark by passing an ordinance that will finally regulate and control movements of tricycles since non-compliance with traffic rules and ordinances can cause fatal injuries to their passengers. 

Will the councilor who will make a difference for order and safety of  tricycle transport, please rise?

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POGI’S CREDITABLE PERFORMANCE. The loss of Gov. Pogi Espino in the May 9 polls was totally unexpected. This is without meaning to discredit the win of incoming Gov. Mon-mon Guico because no fraud and cheating has been tagged and proven.

I say this because I believe Gov. Pogi’s administration performed creditably well in the fight and campaign vs. COVID-19. His team did better than good in preventing a deadly surge of COVIUD-19.  Without a doubt, Pangasinan fared much better than any of the provinces in the region.

I just wonder if this significant achievement was bannered by Espino’s campaign and if it did, did his losing mean our communities took this major achievement for granted? If that were the case, then it was a very sad, disappointing response of the communities. But elections are what they are… how the campaign is conducted eventually is what matters to win.

Hopefully,  the incoming Guico team will adopt the crucial lessons learned by the organized Espino team that worked methodically and efficiently in combatting COVID-19 because the Covid pandemic in the world is far from over.

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 “BLOOD OF YOUR NEWSPAPERMEN.” Last Friday, May 20… The PUNCH had its presswork. It was the day in 1966 when my father – our founder-editor-publisher Ermin Erfe Garcia – was gunned down in his editorial office, mid-afternoon. Dagupan was being battered by a typhoon. 

I was home on summer vacation so it was I who received that frantic phone call from the office “Binaril Papa mo… dinala sa hospital !” My reaction alerted Mama and asked what was wrong. “Binaril si Papa.. nasa hospital siya!” I said numbly and rushed to get the car keys. Mama joined me.

We reached the Pangasinan Provincial Hospital and we saw Papa on the floor (I learned the hospital didn’t have an available stretcher at the time) by the door of the Emergency Room. I rushed to him and held him. His eyes were wide open as he gazed at me. He mumbled: “See Don Rafael…” was all he said before the hospital staff pulled him up to a stretcher and rushed him to the operating room.

Then I heard someone shouting –“Kailangan ng blood donors para Type B…”

 The crowd that gathered at the hospital after a radio reported the shooting, began to ask each other…”Ikaw, ano blood type mo?””Ako type A”… “Ako B”.

Waiting for some word from the operating room was the longest wait in my life. It was broken first by someone handing me his Seiko self-winding watch. I noticed it  stopped working at 3:20 pm. Then, the attending doctors, all Papa’s  friends and fellow Rotarians came out with the news.  “We couldn’t save him… he lost a lot of blood…”

Then, I heard voices around me…”Sino yong bumaril?”… “ Politiko daw…”

I could not make any sense out of it. Why would someone want to kill Papa who’s just a newspaperman?

I only realized what his death meant after I came across his speech before the Pangasinan Press and Radio Club in May 19, 1962 when he was inducted as its president,  four years before he was murdered. 

He wrote: THE ONLY NEWSPAPERMAN HERO IS A DEAD NEWSPAPERMAN… THOSE HEADLINES ON YOUR WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ARE PRINTED NOT ONLY ON PRINTER’S INK. THEY ARE EMBLAZONED WITH THE SWEAT, THE TEARS—AND POSSIBLY YET—THE BLOOD OF YOUR NEWSPAPERMEN. 

https://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?AuthorID=4907

(Lifted from the book authored by the late Fr. Arsenio Jesena, SJ., he who came to Dagupan to meet my father to know more about Karina, our youngest sister, who died in 1963, whose life and death was told in Catholic schools).  Soon his book entitled “Karina” became “The Story of Ermin and Karina.”

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