INCUMBENT senator and outgoing chair of the Senate committee on energy Sherwin Gatchalian has announced that he will be filing a bill that would give another round of Pantawid Pasada Program amounting to a monthly PhP3,000 subsidy to public utility drivers (PUDs) for the next five months.
Corollary to this, Gatchalian lamented that the distribution of the first tranche of the fuel subsidy for public utility vehicle drivers and operators, which was supposed to have been completed within the second week of May, was hit by delays due to a lack of a database of the intended beneficiaries.
The senator has expressed alarm over the plight of the public transport sector as oil companies once again raised local pump prices this morning though the upward adjustment was lower as compared to previous weeks.
Today, the price of diesel rose by PhP1.65 per liter while those of gasoline and kerosene increased by 50 centavos per liter and 10 centavos per liter, respectively.
This marks the fourth straight week that local oil companies jacked up fuel prices. Prior to this week’s price hikes, the accumulative increases stand at PhP29.50 per liter for gasoline, PhP44.25 per liter for diesel, and PhP39.65 per liter for kerosene, based on weekly monitiring conducted by the Department of Energy (DoE).
Gatchalian is urging the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) to speed up the distribution of fuel subsidies to targeted beneficiaries in the public transport sector.
The Senate energy committe chair made the call yesterday after he revealed plans for a third tranche of the fuel subsidy program to provide economic relief to the transport sector reeling from the effects of the spate of protracted oil price increases.
“So many of our public transport drivers have stopped plying their routes and lost their livelihood. The key here is for the government to speed up the distribution of cash aid to them because time is of the essence,” he concluded.
