MikeLigalig.com

By Norman Bordadora, Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Government regulators have started reviewing documents to make sense of a transport industry practice called “kabit-franchising,” which is allegedly how a bus company involved in the death of 42 people in Sablan, Benguet, on Wednesday had been operating.

Like the practice of subcontracting, “kabit” are bus owners who operate by illegally using a different company’s franchise, said lawyer Brenda Poklay, legal counsel of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) in the Cordillera Administrative Region.

Evidence of kabit is rare and usually turns up only after a major accident occurs, much like Bus No. 801 of the La Union-based Eso-Nice Bus Line that turned out to be owned by a different operator, said Robert Pocais, chief of the Land Transportation Office (LTO) in Baguio City.

Police reports said the bus, which came from Baguio and was on its way to San Fernando City in La Union, fell into a 150-foot ravine along the Naguilian Road after its brakes failed.

But President Benigno Aquino III is not convinced that defective brakes were entirely to blame for the accident and wants a deeper probe of the accident.

“I was asking both the Highway Patrol Group and also the LTO to expedite the investigation to find out what actually transpired,” Mr. Aquino told reporters in an interview at a car show in Pasay City on Thursday.

“Faulty mechanical brakes really seem such a lame excuse to me,” he said.

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