Philippine drivers say paying US$50,000 for new e-jeepneys 'will be death of us'

Striking drivers have accused Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr of forgetting his election promise to them as the government moves to scrap all of the country's iconic "jeepneys" in a modernisation exercise that leaves the operators bearing most of the costs.

Several thousand drivers are on a week-long strike beginning Monday to protest against the removal of all diesel-powered vehicles, which have for decades been the most popular form of public transport since they were modified and reproduced from US military jeeps left behind after World War II.

Mar Valbuena, leader of 15,000-strong transport group Manibela (Steering Wheel), said the government's modernisation exercise "will be the death of us. It means we will no longer have any livelihood".

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There was no way jeepney drivers, who belonged to the poorest sector of society, could afford to buy an e-jeepney running on a lithium battery at the cost of 2.8 million pesos (US$51,000) per unit, with a 6 per cent yearly interest rate, he said.

"Why do we need to go into debt if our jeepneys are still roadworthy?" he asked.

During a campaign stop in March 2022, Marcos Jnr had told transport leaders he was not in favour of a "total phase-out" of jeepneys, saying the government "should not look at the age of the vehicle but its condition; how well it is maintained".

His administration reversed that promise last month, saying it would replace all jeepneys across the country with electric ones, and warning that operators who failed to join a cooperative by June 30 would have their yearly "provisional authorities" revoked. The move triggered a backlash that prompted the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) to adjust the deadline to the end of this year.

"Before the election, he said: 'I don't want a phase-out' ... but now he has forgotten that," said Nolan Grulla, spokesman for the UP Transport Group.

"And the painful part here is that the new units would be imported from other countries, even if we have Sarao [Motors], a jeepney manufacturer," he said, referring to the fact that most of the electric jeepneys being sold locally came from either China or Japan.

Last month, Li Longde, chairman of Jiangsu Fengchuen New Energy Power Technology Co Ltd, signed an agreement with the council of Bacolod City in the central Philippine island of Negros, to set up a US$200 million e-jeepney assembly plant there.

Marcos earlier this month appealed to the public transport drivers to "rethink" their strike because "many will suffer".

But drivers who gathered near the University of the Philippines in suburban Quezon City on Monday said they were upset about the lack of financial support given to replace their jeepneys, and the "high-handed" way the government had gone about the modernisation exercise.

"Give us three years [before replacing our units], give us more money with which to buy the e-jeepneys," a driver who called himself Ka Pete told This Week in Asia.

Seven of the country's largest transport groups, which had supported Marcos Jnr's presidential bid on the back of his pledge, said over the weekend they would not join the strike despite the president reversing his position to one of "modernisation".

According to transport leader Orlando Marquez, Marcos Jnr had promised to "prioritise" a Public Transport Consumers Tax Bill to ease drivers' financial burden of buying an e-jeepney as a replacement, but nearly a year on, no law of that sort has been passed by a Congress dominated by the president's allies.

The modernisation exercise, launched in 2017, aims to replace the diesel-powered jeepneys with the globally accepted "Euro 4" electric minibuses or e-jeepneys running on lithium batteries that conform to safety and emission standards.

Data on the number of jeepneys plying the roads varies. The Land Transportation Office classifies them under the utility vehicle category, which numbered 2.58 million as of last year. However, the LTFRB, which is carrying out the exercise, said last month there were 150,000 jeepneys, with fewer than 7,000 of them electric versions.

The government justified the modernisation exercise with a 2021 study done by the De La Salle University for the Environmental Management Bureau, that showed replacing the jeepneys would drastically reduce particle emissions of noxious chemicals such as carbon dioxide and non-methane volatile organic compounds, which cause health problems.

"The replacement of all jeepneys with Modern Euro 4 units may be expected to provide a 7.45 billion pesos annual health benefit," the study calculated. However, it also said emissions from jeepneys paled in comparison to those of the country's existing coal power plants.

Valbuena of Manibela also questioned the new LTFRB order requiring all drivers and operators to join cooperatives if these had already been established in the same franchise routes they were operating in.

One of the major aims of the programme was to force individual driver-operators who dominate the transport sector to form "transport cooperatives" of at least 15 members each. The LTFRB promised that these entities would be entitled to benefits such as government subsidies and access to credit facilities to aid in modernising their fleets and running them "in a systematic and predictable manner".

However Valbuena said forcing competitors to join the same cooperative would inevitably lead to "a power struggle", and suspected that the modernisation scheme was put together in order to hand over to private corporations the transport routes currently being held by small operators.

Last September, Biyahe, a newly formed firm by Filipino tycoon Manuel Pangilinan, said it would spend over 1.5 billion pesos to buy 500 e-jeepneys and hire drivers.

Monday's strike, though, did not paralyse Metro Manila, as the government provided free transport to commuters and jeepney drivers who had backed Marcos Jnr's candidacy did not take part. Vice-President Sara Duterte, also the education secretary, criticised the strikers and their supporters, saying this "will only exacerbate the learning hardships of our students".

However, two police officers monitoring the strikers separately said the drivers' complaints were valid and that the price per unit of an e-jeepney was "too heavy a burden".

One of them said his father was a jeepney driver-operator.

"He managed to put the three of us through college with his meagre earnings. As a boy, I used to ride along with my father while he was driving," he said.

"Last December, because he could no longer afford to have the engine repaired due to the pandemic, my father sold his unit which he had inherited from my grandfather," he added. "I think the government should help the drivers more in buying the new units."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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