I WAS at one of the two Pampanga giant malls over the weekend and because it’s a holiday on Monday, May 1, (long weekend), a lot have spent time in places including shopping centers either to relax to merely while away time.
It can be noted that malls offer free air-conditioned environment, which makes people feel comfortable amid the scorching heat of summer besides the fact that the cool air inside malls is free.
After spending some time at the mall, I recalled that I need to buy some hardware materials which I believed can be found in a giant hardware store near the said malls. Sensing that I would spend time getting my car in the mall’s parking lot and experience traffic as well, I decided to take on the tricycle in the mall’s public transport terminal.
The hardware store is around 600 meters away. I could have walked from the mall to the said establishment if not for the high heat of summer so I decided to ride the trike. When I reached the hardware store in Mexico town, I was charged P40. I asked the tricycle driver as to why such very short trip costs so much. I even haggled for the price since the trip cost me just less than a minute.
The tricycle driver told me that it’s their prevailing price and we cannot do anything with it. Indeed, I was helpless except to give in to the demand of the tricycle driver; this despite my opposition to the amount which I firmly believe that it is overpriced.
Charge to experience is what I just put in my mind despite my thinking that I should have been charged with only P20 with that distance. I simply thought that it was a simple highway robbery that I became a victim just for once.
I told my experience to a friend who also said that he had the same experience riding a tricycle stationed in front of the former Paskuhan village. He told me that upon alighting from a bus from Manila, he took a trike for a short hop to one of the malls nearby and he was charged P60 for such a very short trip.
The tricycle drivers are indeed earning a living. However, they are also robbing the public due to their onerous amount they charge to people. We cannot avoid the fact that it’s their work to ferry passengers from their terminal to their customers’ destination, only they charge so much that people are helpless except to pay.
By the way, before I and the tricycle driver I took a ride with parted ways, I asked him if he has the franchise or if their tricycle terminal has a permit of sorts to ferry passengers. He retorted that his trike has no franchise and that their terminal is allowed by the mall management but not the municipality having jurisdiction over their terminal.
Normally, tricycles get their franchises to operate from the local government unit they are in. Abnormally, a lot of tricycles do not apply for franchises and they simply establish their terminals and take on passengers to destinations.
It seems that something is wrong with the scheme since the riding public have no protection from these undocumented tricycles who even ply highways and busy streets. They are likewise pose danger to their passengers since these trike drivers often display the lack of discipline on roads.
In addition to their violation of overcharging their passengers, the tricycles, which have their terminals near malls, have no fare matrix on their sidecars thus, their passengers have no protection also from being exacted with high fares.
It’s a case of highway robbery.
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