Money matters

THERE IS more than what one reads in the papers on the protest of truckers against the implementation of Ordinance 261.
O-261 aims to regulate the hauling and transport of quarry-derived materials within Pampanga with a strict proviso on the truck size and load volume.
O-261 was principally authored by Senior Board Member Cris Garbo but crafted with the inputs of various stakeholders not the least of which is the Advocacy for the Development of Central Luzon which first raised the need to definitively put a stop to overloaded trucks that have been a curse to motorists and the principal destroyers of roads and highways.
In his sponsoring speech, Garbo emphasized O-261 “will prevent the deterioration and destruction of roads, bridges and highways and the recurrence of vehicular accidents that result to loss of lives and properties.”
These protesting truckers in effect are howling against the rightful regulations to check on their abuses. Damned, these truckers have no right even just to murmur against O-261, having long been violating, with so much impunity, the Anti-Overloading Law. They should even be thankful the Land Transportation Office and the local police have not exacted the full measure of the law upon them. Or have they, the exaction coming in some other form – yellower, bluer and with more graphics than a traffic violation ticket ?
Selfish motives, to be kind about it, are easily gauged among the truckers based on our above arguments. Then, there is still even worse.
The purported umbrella organization of these mostly sand and gravel haulers – the Federation of Pampanga Truckers, Inc. (FPTI) – reportedly sacked its own president, one Mike Tapang, for his alleged “individual judgment that is self-serving and of personal interest.”
The redundancies there clear indication of how much contempt those who ousted Tapang had for him.
Tapang, it was said, tried to bludgeon the FPTI with an “unrelenting proposal for an outside management and consultancy company to manage the whole operations and all the affairs of the federation.”
That company they identified as one Suretrux Management and Consultancy (SMC).
Cries the FPTI board: “We will not agree to the demands of the management company for fees that we found to be unreasonable beyond logical proportion and without any accounting records for such an undertaking.”
Redundancies there again. Guys, where did you learn your syntax?
The FPTI board’s coup de grace: “This federation do hereby condemned (sic) this individual judgment of Tapang...for such an act that is unbecoming of an officer especially being president and the lost (sic) of trust of its (sic) capacity to lead the federation objectively and without prejudice, we do hereby demand the concurrent (sic) president to turn over all of its (sic) duties and current affairs to the officers and board of trustees. Furthermore, we demand the President’s irrevocable letter of resignation effective immediately.”
More than a management and consultancy company, the FPTI needs a good English grammar teacher.
That aside, we can see clearly a power play in the FPTI.
So what has this Tapang to hurl back?
“There was no MOA or such other documents signed to finally use the services of the SMC. I was just bringing up an idea or plan as an officer of the federation. That is not enough ground to oust me for loss of confidence as cited in their decision,” so was he quoted as saying.
The real issue, whispered to me by one in the know, is Tapang’s membership in the technical working group tasked to implement O-261.
Tapang, it is bruited about, takes charge of the accreditation of truckers.
“As a trucker himself, Tapang should have had the decency to have abstained from the accreditation committee. Selfish, vested interests could not be helped but seen there by the other truckers,” my source said.
Of course, “selfish, vested interests” would be reared and nurtured there. As at the time of Gov. Lito Lapid – in his second term, specifically – when the men who controlled the issuances of official receipts were themselves quarry operators, to the detriment and chagrin of their competitors.
Pera- pera pa rin sa usaping buhangin. (It is still a question of money in the issue of quarry.)