Dealing with drugged public transport drivers
Credit to Author: THE MANILA TIMES| Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 16:13:35 +0000
EDITORIAL
THE Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) on Tuesday announced the results of what it rather amusingly called “Oplan: Huli Week.” But the news was no laughing matter. In surprise drug tests conducted on public transportation workers nationwide ahead of the busy Holy Week travel period, 54 tested positive for methamphetamine, or shabu.
The random drug tests were administered to 7,729 bus drivers, conductors, dispatchers and barkers at transport terminals across the country. Of those that tested positive for drugs, 36 were bus drivers, 17 were conductors and one was a dispatcher.
There are a couple of ways to look at this development. An optimistic view would be that the vast majority of transportation workers are drug-free; the 54 who were caught with drugs in their systems only represented about 0.7 percent of those tested.
On the other hand, the 7,729 who were tested only represented about one-fifth of all the bus drivers, conductors and associated personnel employed in the country (the Philippines’ nationwide bus fleet is estimated to be about 24,000). That means if the prevalence of drug use is roughly the same across the whole industry, there could be a couple of hundred drug-impaired bus personnel on Philippine roads right now, undetected by the authorities.
And that only accounts for buses. When one considers other forms of transportation, such as jeepneys and tricycles, whose operators are just as human as bus crewmen and face similarly challenging work environments, the problem may be much worse than it appears.
Of course, it is not our intention to cause unnecessary alarm among the public. We realize that the vast majority of travelers this holiday will reach their destinations without any untoward incidents, and we hope, as anyone would, that all travelers are able to do so in safety and comfort. Nevertheless, the reality is that there are transportation workers out there who are putting the lives of passengers in grave danger, and it does not really matter how many the PDEA caught or did not catch; even one is too many, especially if people are injured or killed as a result of drug-induced human errors on the road.
There are a number of reasons drug use persists among transport personnel. There are drug test protocols in place for public utility drivers, but there are insufficient resources to ensure that these are closely monitored and enforced. Transport or bus operators, although with a few exceptions, have largely been unreliable in policing drug use among their own employees. From the employees’ perspective, the failure of efforts to do away with the abusive “boundary system” forces them to work long hours and take reckless risks to earn a reasonable wage. It is little wonder, then, that some are tempted to try the cheap but dangerous solution of using illegal drugs.
Understanding what motivates drug use does not excuse it, however; it is still ultimately a choice of the individual, and an unacceptable one when public safety is at stake.
While the government must find ways of helping public transport operators to boost their drivers’ income, Congress should strongly consider making penalties for drug possession or use by transportation workers much stiffer than they are. This is to more effectively deter those responsible for public safety from making that deadly choice. At the same time, penalties against transportation operators who fail to monitor their employees should be strengthened as well.
Those moves would be welcomed, but both the legislative and the executive departments should not neglect the root causes of the problem. Eliminating the boundary system once and for all and enforcing regular wages for transportation workers will ease the economic burden that forces them to behave recklessly. Likewise, drug rehabilitation for those who have fallen prey to drug addiction must be made available to them, or mandated if necessary.
The post Dealing with drugged public transport drivers appeared first on The Manila Times Online.