Dagupan clamps down against colorum PUVs

By Liezle BasaInigo

DAGUPAN CITY, Pangasinan — The city government is clamping down on public utility vehicles (PUVs), particularly tricycles, that illegally ply routes around the city with the creation of the Anti-Colorum Task Force (ACTF).

Mayor Belen Fernandez announced his choice of SPO4 Carlito Ocampo as ACTF chief to implement his executive order to rid the city of PUVs transporting passengers without a franchise or a permit.

Belen said he created the ACTF to ensure the safety of the riding public and to uplift the economic benefits of the legitimate operators of PUVs particularly tricycles which number around 4,000 in the city.

The city government only has a record of around 2,500 tricycles with franchises to ply certain routes.

A poster in front of the Dagupan City Hall states that colorum jeeps, vans, trucks, buses and tricycles will be apprehended and that the legal basis for this is an ordinance passed by the local government, specifically “City Ordinance 1748, Article 6, Section 11.”

Ocampo is set to meet the other transport groups in the city to explain and inform them of the city’s objective to clean the streets of colorum vehicles.

But even before this meeting takes place, two concerned drivers told this correspondent that they had been recently flagged down by members of the Public Order and Safety Office for a traffic violation and their driver’s licenses confiscated.

They questioned the authority of POSO members to confiscate their licenses, prompting this correspondent to raise the question to Land Transportation Office (LTO) Region 1 director Jojo Guadiz who gave this answer: “No. Nobody, except the issuing body, has the right to take your license away. And even then, you are entitled to your day in court first.”

Guadiz said this is stated in Republic Act 4136, the Land Transportation and Traffic Code. 

He went further, saying, “No city council can enforce a resolution or ordinance that is in conflict with the LTO law.”