The struggles of the Pedicab drivers will never lose!
Yesterday, two pedicab drivers died resisting the riot police near the City Hall in Manila.
Their deaths were result of their struggles for better, dignified livelihood and its opposition against its local government's attempt to ban every vehicle that may resulted to their loss of livelihoods and even pushing their way of lives lower.
These people, pedicab drivers by profession, were in outrage as the local government, led by Mayor Alfredo Lim, issued a decree banning motorized pedicabs for being "harmful to the environment, noisy, and a traffic violator." Drivers may agreed that they violate some of the traffic rules but it doesn't mean that they are really traffic violators nor emitting carbon monoxide as they use unleaded diesel oil for their engines.
Through their efforts, and supported by various progressive organizations allied to the cause of a dignified livelihood like those of pedicab driving, they still kept on resisting just to scrap off Lim's decree banning the presence of motorized vehicles in Manila, that even in the halls of Congress that issue had been tackled off.
But,
How come it end up resulted to 2 driver's deaths? For sure these policemen didn't notice that some, or most of them had the possibility to gain revenge out of harming their colleagues, especially coming from the Muslim center and other areas where these pedicabs acted as lords of the roads. And according to GMA news, posted last November 2, it said:
"Violence marred a barricade in a main street in Manila set up by drivers of "kuliglig" (motorized pedicabs) to protest a city order barring them from the city's main streets.
Some policemen and drivers were injured when the latter hurled stones at the lawmen who tried to dismantle the barricade at Burgos Street past 2 p.m., more than two hours after the protest started, radio dzBB's Carlo Mateo reported."
Well... from a peaceful protest end up in a violent rage. Yes, the drivers threw out stones as the policemen violently trying to dismantle the barricades, including means to turn a peaceful protest into a violent one. The policemen even told to the media that one policemen end up wounded after being thrown out with stones yet they even fired tear gas to the families, that according to GMA news:
"Women and children who accompanied the drivers pleaded with the police to stop stunning them with tear gas, even as other drivers fled in different directions to elude arrest by pursuing policemen.".
Speaking of those pedicabs, like the famous Jeepneys, they even able to provide shortcuts, fast routes to its passengers; and it even shows the Pilipino ingenuity that for sure I myself, as a writer and once a passenger would also think that how come the Rickshaws remained still in India and the Tuktuks in Thailand, why we Pilipinos settle enough to the Jeepney if there are other vehicles here just like the Kuliglig pedicab? whether they are motorized or not they are still pedicabs, and at least these drivers had a dignified job that they may able to rectify their errors if they had done so, the ability to organize into TODAs (Tricycle Operators and Drivers Associations) as they do, but why to ban it, despite its capacity to have a compromise without any risk at all, that they can discipline themselves as possible?
Some critics would tell that these vehicles ought to be banned away, they even compared Manila's roads filled with Jeepneys and Pedicabs with London's taxis and double deck buses, but remember-Manila is an old city, and its old roads lies vehicles that to a non-passenger would think of it as eyesores to a 'beautiful city' they called of. After all, these critics know how to assail Tondo, San Andres and other areas that are known for being 'bulwarks of the poor', but having NO solution except assailing them and be deprived of a dignified employment and justice like these drivers and others who were suffered from Police Brutality.
Despite the deaths of two pedicab drivers, it is not enough to quash the rage of these drivers, of these semiproletarians. The struggles of these drivers will never lose!
