Leyte drivers say oil price rollbacks not enough

By Veronika Barbosa
Bulatlat.com

TACLOBAN CITY– The prices of diesel and gasoline may have rolled back for three consecutive weeks but Leyte-based drivers stressed that these are still insufficient. 

Rolando Mendigo, 59, a jeepney driver for 30 years from Tanauan town in Leyte, said that despite the price rollback on diesel, he still struggles to provide for his family. “The grave effects of the oil price hikes are so significant that these rollbacks are still not enough for us to recover from the crisis,” Mendigo said in the vernacular.

Mendigo said that he only gets to take home P300 pesos (more or less $5) on a daily basis at the onset of the oil price hike, and remains the same even after a few weeks of price rollbacks in diesel. “We’ve learned to strictly manage our expenses by eating only twice a day. We eat our late breakfast at 10:00 a.m. which also serves as our lunch.”

“All the drivers I know struggle so much because of this oil crisis. We demand the removal of excise taxes on fuel and, better yet, revert the diesel prices to around P50 pesos (less than $1) per liter just like before,” Mendigo added.

Reuben Costibolo, 53, said that the Downstream Oil Deregulation Act needs to be repealed because “the government has no control over oil prices that is why bigtime oil companies increase prices dramatically due to the lack of government regulation.”

“If the government has full control on petroleum prices, then sudden and dramatic increases would not happen. While removing VAT and excise taxes helps, the best long term solution is to repeal the Oil Deregulation Law,” Costibolo said. 

He added that no fuel subsidy has been given to them yet by the national government. According to him, no help has been extended by local government units since the oil price hikes started.

Meanwhile, Tulong Kabataan Metro-Tacloban, a youth disaster response network of youth organizations, launched a Kusinang Bayan where they distributed free meals to jeepney driverson April 19. In a statement, they stressed the need for the removal of value-added and excise taxes and echoed the call of the jeepney drivers to junk the Downstream Oil Deregulation Act. (AMU, DAA)

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