BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

MANY DAGUPENOS, pedestrians especially, are wondering whether there’s still the law regulating the operation of tricycles in Dagupan City. They feel that if the law has not been repealed or amended, perhaps it’s more honored now in the breach than in the observance.

One need only look at the buzzing, roaring tricycle units in the city roads today to realize what these observers mean – there are infinitely much more units running on the road now than at any other time and, hear this, six out of 10 of them do not have the mandated route and windshield numbers painted on them.

That could only mean they’re, in more sense than one, colorum (or unregistered) units. Woe to the passenger who meets an accident while riding in one of these three-wheeled contraptions.
And the manners and discipline of many of these drivers – they’re fit to be hanged for gross discourtesy! City Hall (or anyone interested to find this out among the many salaried, sitting factotums in there – hello, anybody home?) need only ask the first citizen on the street to validate this observation.

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This unwelcome development can also mean many of these public utility conveyances (to include the jeepneys), since the start of this city administration, have been thumbing their noses at enforcement authorities (and the law itself) and violating regulations at will.

They can hardly be blamed though; with no official (surprisingly even Robert Erfe Mejia’s “orange boys” – the POSO) now seemingly giving a hoot about authorized or unauthorized, legal and illegal, genuine or fake operators, it’s a free zone out there. And the law be damned!

Perhaps, they’re all waiting for a precedent case when an accident victim, riding in one of these colorum tricycles, finally sues the city for allowing these illegals to ferry people even without the mandatory insurance covers.

Remember that case long ago of a citizen who fell on an open manhole here and sued the city for his pain and shame? Well, the city lost that one – and the city seems not to have learned its lesson well.

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Speaking of the Public Order and Safety Office (POSO), while we commiserate with Robert’s Boys for their largely marginalized role (compared to BSL’s time) in the Fernandez Et.Al. era, we feel that does not at all justify their ever making light of their duties (after all, they’re still being paid by the city, correct?) or worse, making hay, using precisely such duties.

During the Bangus Festival Street Party on April 30, for instance, a friend was hot under the collar reporting to us about an alleged lucrative trade of a POSO operative stationed at the Mayombo (near Mercury Drug area) loading/unloading area when traffic was rerouted.

It seems he made a ‘killing’ charging P20 from each driver loading passengers for the Calasiao, Urdaneta, Santa Barbara route.

“Akalmoy baleg”!,was how our informer described the POSO guy’s “livelihood” that stretched for several hours that day.
I know Robert won’t stand for this one bit. Too bad, this reached us very close to deadline I didn’t have the luxury of time to talk to him, though I did try calling him up but missed him.

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Everyone who has worked with him will miss “Reggie”– yes, Reginald Ubando of Bonuan, this city, he who gamely handled the Waste Management Division when no one among the limpia manos wanted to.

Reggie was one of the few city officials I could relate to, both in the past Lim administration and the new Fernandez regime, which he both served. He had that uncanny way of seeing to it that your questions or concerns about governance are answered with tact and humility, whether it’s embarrassing to him or not.

When I first noticed him in the City Hall area, that is, during the first years of Mayor Al Fernandez as a seemingly overeager technical assistant (consultant) of the late controversial Jaime “Kamagong” dela Cruz who sat in the city council for a time, I immediately sensed the young Reggie would make a career in local government.

And he did. Not as an elective official, perhaps, (although I’ve always believed he was only marking time and piling resources before he would make a run for a council seat) but as an appointive one who soon became a byword in the City Hall circle.

He was everywhere during the Bangus Festival all of last month and nobody could have known what that heart of his was carrying as a burden all throughout. It proved too much even for the young dynamo that he was.

Goodbye, Reggie. Yours was a life well lived, not wasted.