By Sunday Post
Threatened with apprehension, the lowly
habal habal, the cheapest mode of land transport anywhere in Bohol, was given a new lease on life, with traffic enforcers “relaxing†its rules and regulations allowing its illegal operations unmolested, in the meantime.
This was the assurance of Land Transportation Officer Joey Maloyloy-on, in an interview yesterday.
An update was sought from the LTO boss after the much-publicized threat to arrest habal-habal operators following instructions from the LTO Manila office.
A flying squad from the LTO regional office was deployed in Bohol Tuesday to carry out the apprehension of habal-habals only to relax the gravity of their drive to give time to operators to comply with existing traffic rules.
Since there is no law yet legalizing the motorcycle-for-hire mode of transport, the LTO was instructed to rid the highways of illegal for-hire vehicles locally known as habal-habal.
In Bohol as any place in the Philippines, motorbikes were converted into habal-habals to ferry passengers in remote and far-flung barangays.
In some God-forsaken localities, habal-habals are the cheapest means of public transport that they can negotiate even in some slippery trails where four-wheeled vehicles even fear to tread.
But it was to the good fortune of the thousands of habal-habals all over Bohol that their arrest order was stayed pending an intensive education drive.
It was to the credit of Cong. Edgar Chatto of the first district that a moratorium was in force to allow illegal motorized transport to go with their merry ways plying the nooks and crannies of Bohol’s inland and coastal barangays.
Chatto, the principal author of a pending bill in Congress legitimizing habal-habal operations, made strong representation with then LTO commissioner Alberto Suansing to allow the two-wheeled vehicle to ply their usual routes.
With the schedule of the LTO flying squad already set for its Bohol operations, the team of traffic enforcers just the same went on with their assigned task.
The instruction was for the team to conduct law enforcement activities relative to Republic Act 4136, the Land Transportation and Traffic Code, Republic Act 8750, the Seatbelt Act, Republic Act 8749, Clean Air Act and other related laws regarding motor vehicle road worthiness inspection. The team is tasked to implement traffic laws from Feb. 10 to 21.
However, in a check with Maloloy-on, he said, it may be true that LTO patrols were conducted in strategic areas in Bohol but they were there to warn motorists of an impending drive on all forms of traffic violations.
The next time the traffic men are assigned here possibly this June, there will be no let up in going after traffic violators, this according t the LTO top gun.
The LTO registrar said there were cases that the flying squad had to flag down motorists to find out if they were in possession of a driver’s license, registration papers or if their vehicles have the necessary contraptions like headlight, tail light, etc., as required by law.
On the helmet requirement, the LTO was also relaxed in the implementation of the new law.
Guided no less by Memorandum OrderNo.AHS-2008-01, Maloloy-on said that this memo provided for a five-year moratorium imposed on the mandatory use of prescribed standard helmet effective Sept. 30, 2008.
This means, pending determination of the prescribed helmet to be made by the Department of Trade and Industry, mandatory compliance on the helmet law is held in abeyance.
However, for the safety of motorists, traffic enforcers urged, motorists traveling in national and highly urbanized city roads while awaiting the result of the study on its applicability along municipal and barangay roads, are mandated to wear the crash helmet for their own safety and protection.
Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=18014.0
