MANILA, Philippines — Manibela on Tuesday said it launched the first day of its three-day transport strike over what it called an insufficient fuel price rollback and a government fuel aid system that continues to burden drivers.
Protesting in Philcoa, Quezon City, the group said the rollback did not match the decline in world oil prices and that pump prices remained unjustly high.
Manibela Chairman Mar Valbuena said transport workers expected a much bigger rollback, with fuel prices still hovering at around P94 to P100 per liter.
“We expected that the rollback now should not be lower than P75 already, but why is it only P25?” Valbuena said.
He said oil firms were quick to raise prices when global oil prices surged but slow to cut them when the market moved down.
Valbuena also hit the government’s subsidy distribution, saying the process had dragged on for weeks and forced drivers to repeatedly comply with changing requirements.
He said the system was making drivers suffer just to access public aid funded by taxpayers.
“It is not just or fair, the aid distribution system is being used for politics” he said.
Valbuena said many drivers in Metro Manila had been lining up for two to three weeks, only to be told to return with additional documents or corrections in their records.
He said the changing requirements showed how inefficient and burdensome the process had become for transport workers already struggling with high fuel costs.
“It is the taxpayers’ money. Why make it hard for us?” he said.
Valbuena said transport groups were continuing the protest because they would not accept what they viewed as a misleading rollback and a broken subsidy system.
