Legazpi forms task force to help tricycle drivers

LEGAZPI CITY --- The city government here will create a Tricycle Task Force (TTF) that will help formulate and review a tricycle route plan to benefit drivers affected by the prohibition of tricycles along national highways by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).

Mayor Noel Rosal, during his regular media briefing on Monday, said the task force will conduct meetings, public consultations and hearings with stakeholders and inspect the areas of tricycle operations to rationalize the authorized routes of all tricycles and pedicabs and ensure that they do not pass by the national highways.

“The task force will draft or update the TRP (tricycle route plan) within 30 days from the issuance of the memorandum and part of the plan includes the schematic map on all the location of tricycle terminals and tricycle route authorized by the LGUs,” he added.

Rosal also said he will ask for a forum with all the officers of the tricycle organizations and other government agencies regarding the creation of a tricycle route plan to establish alternate routes for their daily operations. Around 1,200 units of tricycle in this city are affected by the circular from the DILG banning them along national roads and highways.

Almost 80 percent of Legazpi’s thoroughfares are considered as national roads and only 20 percent comprise city and barangay roads, Rosal said.

“There is a big possibility to revise the route of tricycle and pedicabs in Legazpi in order to have a transition period and also to prevent the use of all the national roads,” he added.

Rosal said that he directed the Task Force Kalinigan as well as the Public Safety Office (PSO), the Philippine National Police (PNP) and all the barangay chairpersons to remove all illegal structures in the 70 villages of this city in connection with Memorandum Circular No. 2019-121 issued by the DILG.

The TTF will be composed of the mayor as chairman, the city chief of police as vice chairman, and as members, the Sangguniang Panlungsod chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Public Safety, president of the Liga ng mga Barangay, and head of the tricycle regulatory board, among others.

Banning all tricycles and pedicabs along the national highways is included in the road-clearing operations being implemented by the DILG. (PNA)