Drivers and operators of traditional jeepneys and other transport groups are staging a strike in Bacolod City from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, March 26, as part of a nationwide protest to demand government action versus rising fuel prices brought on by unrest in the Middle East.
Leading the strike in Bacolod are the United Negros Drivers and Operators Center-Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng Tsuper at Opereytor Nationwide (UNDOC PISTON) and the Kabacod Negros Transport Organization (KNETCO).
Four rally centers will be set up near the Tayabas Elementary School in Talisay City; and at the Magsaysay flyover, corner of Burgos -Lopez Jaena streets, and Bata flyover in Bacolod City, Eric Bendoy, UNDOC-PISTON secretary general, said.
They are calling for the suspension of value-added and excise tax on petroleum products, and the repeal of oil deregulation law, he said.
The Bacolod strike will only be for one day, Bendoy said.
Modern jeepneys are expected to continue to ply the city’s streets.
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) Negros, in a press statement, expressed its full support for the strike.
“This protest is a legitimate and necessary response to an unbearable crisis—a crisis manufactured not by global markets alone, but by a national government that prioritizes taxes and corporate profits over the lives of its people,” Bayan Negros spokesperson Berlita Ante said.
The declared “state of energy emergency” by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is a hollow gesture, a confession of failure without concrete action, she said.
“It provides no shield to our drivers, who now count their daily earnings not in profit, but in survival…This is a death sentence for a family’s future, a slow starvation sanctioned by state policy,” she added.
“The root of this crisis is the system of bureaucrat capitalism, where the government functions as a tax collector for foreign oil companies and a protector of local cartels,” Ante said.
BAYAN Negros is calling for the immediate scrapping of the VAT and excise taxes on petroleum products, a substantial fuel price rollback, and the distribution of sufficient and unconditional emergency aid to all affected drivers and operators.
It is also calling on government to penalize oil cartels for profiteering.*
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