THE jeepney has a revered place in our history. When American liberation forces came in 1945, the ubiquitous jeep took over the country’s streets from the horse-dawn calesa. It was remodeled initially to fit six passengers in two rows at the back. The three-seat rows became longer over the years – to five, ten, and today as many as 20 on one side – so that the bigger jeepneys today can accommodate 42 passengers just like buses.
But the shape of the jeepney somehow remained. And so did the decorative features that identified the jeepney worldwide as the mass transport vehicle for ordinary folk in Metro Manila. It was decorated with paintings of Philippine scenes along the sides, with rich mixtures of horns and mirrors, and the inevitable hood ornament, a horse symbolizing the old “king of the road,” the horse-drawn calesa.
Today the jeepney is fighting for its continued existence. It is seen by many as an institution of the past that should now be replaced by more modern means of transportation. We have giant buses and elevated trains and taxis that provide mass transportation. But all over the country today we still find jeepneys.
The problem is that so many of them are old, with old engines and even older bodies. Many run at night without lights; none one of them have turning lights. So that fellow motorists have to be doubly careful when running beside them. They tend to congregate at street corners waiting for passengers. They stop and go wherever passengers want and since the driver is by himself, he is also his own conductor. All this creates problems for traffic enforcers.
The jeepney strike called last Monday was in protest over a government move to phase out 15-year-old jeepneys. The government mobilized other possible means of transportation, including dump trucks, to help commuters, but that still left many people stranded on the streets of Metro Manila and other cities and towns in the country.
The jeepney strike was a call for help from jeepney drivers who stand to lose their only way to earn a living if all old jeepneys are demobilized. A special program must be devised focused on the estimated 400,000 jeepney drivers of Metro Manila and the hundreds of thousands of others in the rest of the country.
The Duterte program has already ventured into many new areas which previous administrations had ignored. It should look into a plan for jeepneys and for jeepney drivers, a plan that they can afford.