Oil price hikes hard for drivers

HARD TIMES. Drivers’ group Piston sees a total of P13.75 increase in gasoline price and P13.50 for diesel since January this year. The increases came in eight batches. (SunStar photo / Arni Aclao)
HARD TIMES. Drivers’ group Piston sees a total of P13.75 increase in gasoline price and P13.50 for diesel since January this year. The increases came in eight batches. (SunStar photo / Arni Aclao)

FORTY-one-year-old jeepney driver Jovy Rosales’s wife is about to give birth. They already have two kids. One is 11 and the other is nine. Both attend school. With those, he sees more expenses coming.

He is just one of the many who have to bear the brunt of an increasing price in petroleum products.

For him to earn P400 for his family’s expenses, with his 06C jeepney plying the Guadalupe-Carbon route, he needs to work for 16 hours.

Since the children are still small, his wife takes care of them. But what made life even harder was that in 2016, a fire broke out in their neighborhood and they had to temporarily stay at the Cebu International Convention Center.

“Karon nga grabe na ang pagsaka gyud, niya niabot na ni karon og P49 (litro ang diesel) halos na gyud sobras katunga na gyud ang mawala sa among kinitaan. Napunta na gyud sa gasoline station, oil companies among kinitaan (Now that the increases have been too high, with the price now reaching P49 (per liter of diesel), more than half of our usual earnings are taken away. It goes to the gasoline station, to the oil companies),” said Rosales, who has been a jeepney driver for 14 years.

He rents the jeepney at P600 per day, and he has to gas up P1,400 to run for 12 to 16 hours.

The Pagkakaisa ng Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operators Nationwide (Piston) Cebu said the continuing increases in gas price is critical for drivers.

Piston spokesperson Greg Perez said the increase in gasoline price will have a domino effect, necessitating a fare hike as well.

Piston, however, is not asking for a fare increase from the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB) since it does not want to pass the burden to commuters.

“Padayon kami nga nagdemanda, padayon kami nga nanawagan nga ibasura, tanggalon ang (excise) tax sa petrolyo (We continue to make demands, to make a call to dump, remove the excise tax on petroleum),” Perez told Superbalita yesterday.

Aside from calling for the scrapping of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (Train) law, they also want an end to Republic Act 8479 or the Oil Deregulation Law, which takes the regulatory powers on fuel price away from government.

Piston noted that since January until the current increase, gasoline price has risen by P13.75 and diesel by P13.50. The increases came in eight batches.

However, Rey Maleza, chief of the Energy Industry Management Division of the Department of Energy (DOE) Visayas, said they only put the increase within the same period at P12.12 for gasoline and P12.35 for diesel.

They also recorded 37 price movements for gasoline and 38 for diesel.

Their records also show P3.32/liter as the biggest one-time increase for gasoline, and P1.35/liter for diesel, which happened yesterday. (HBL)

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