Monday, August 4, 2014

MRT Woes


Personally, I dread riding the MRT to me it feels like its a sub level of purgatory. Just the thought of riding  the MRT on a rush hour because I have no choice is enough to trigger hyperventillation. So I don't know if I should be happy about the fact that the government wants to take over the running of MRT. I think that this is going to make commuter woes even worse. Imagine my shock when I found out that MRT 3 currently operates double its original capacity – with 600,000 passengers a day when it was originally designed for 350,000.


In March last year, President Aquino signed Executive Order No 126 stating that   Secretary Joseph Abaya, Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and the Department of Finance (DOF) should purchase MRT 3 pursuant to a build-lease-transfer (BLT) agreement. The Department of Budget and Management even allocated P56 billion ($1.3 billion) for the complete government takeover in the 2014 national budget. The takeover will result in billions of pesos in savings for taxpayers used mostly to cover the 15% return on investment guaranteed to MRT Corp. (MRTC). The government spends about P7 billion ($160 million) on subsidies for the MRT 3 operations.

My question is this is the government really equipped to run the MRT? How can we be sure that there will be no corruption in the MRT? Why did PNOY suddenly say okay let take over MRT Management. I hope they thought this thru. For all our commuters sake!!

3 comments:

papaleng said...

I agree with your thought, does the government have the full knowledge of running this transport system. I know that a hidden agenda is embedded in the plan.

Aylin Vedad said...

I hope they will study it first, like how to manage and maintain so everyone can be at ease on his/her daily transportation routine.

Jeatte said...

there is a pro and con on both sides. Pro is that the government is about public service but they tend to steal a lot. Con is usually private sectors handle business better but they tend to focus on income rather than progress.

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