By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
(Since the place of the news is outside the coverage of the ZigZag Weekly, I am running this story in this space on the justification that the situation described does affect Cordillerans as people from Mtn. Province, Ifugao, Kalinga and Apayao are among those who use the subject highway.)
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) weighbridge station in Aritao, Nueva Vizcaya whose entire manpower was sacked due to alleged extortion activities last week is beset by other problems which render it practically useless.
Of foremost concern is that north-bound trucks and trailers do not pass the weighbridge
DPWH Region 2 Regional Director Melanio Briosos admitted to the Manila Times that trucks and trailers coming from the south some of which are laden with metal and cement usually evade the weighbridge specially when the trucks coming from the opposite direction are loaded and they do not see any policeman in sight.
Briosos said that before the extortion scandal hit the weighbridge station operation last week, the fact that the facility practically covers only the southbound truck traffic was already raised in the Regional Development Council.
Briosos also said that during a meeting at the DPWH central office in February, one proposed solution to the problem is for the weighbridge in Digdig, Caranglan, Nueva Ecija to weigh the north-bound trucks while the Aritao weighbridge will check those going south but no decision has yet been reached on the matter.
Briosos also said that they will consider the installation of CCTV cameras to monitor and identify trucks which slip through without passing the weighbridge.
The existing tripartite memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the regional offices of the Land Transportation Office (LTO) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) for the implementation of the anti-overloading law states that the DPWH is in charge of flagging down trucks and trailers from both directions.
The MOA also says that apart from providing security to the station, a minimum of two policemen are to man the checkpoints at the entries to the weighbridge 24 hours a day.
Briosos said that weighbridges are vital to the maintenance of roads because over-loaded trucks cause failures of the concrete pavement and contribute to the early deterioration of the roads and bridges.
Briosos said that with the removal of their 15 job order employees manning the station on April 6, the weighbridge has been shut down momentarily, a situation similar to what happened in 2016 when operation of the weighbridge was disrupted from July 22 to July 31 due to the dismissal of its workforce on account of alleged irregularities.
He said that they hope to restore the operation of the weighbridge station before the end of the month even just for monitoring purposes pending the deputation of their personnel by the LTO so they could issue temporary operator’s permit (TOP) to violators.
Briosos also said that another problem hounding the weighbridge operation is according to the organizational structure provided by the central office, the station will be manned by job order employees.
He informed that during the February meeting in the central office, they have recommended that the weighbridge manpower will become a separate section of DPWH regional offices.
He also said that the supervision of the activities of the station is not “very rigid” because of the distance of Aritao to Tuguegarao City where the regional office is located.
Regarding the alleged mulcting activities in the station which earned the ire of President Rodrigo Duterte, he said he is not certain about what really happened because at first, the information was the alleged amount being extorted per truck was P20.00 in the Digdig weighbridge station, then it was P200.00 in the Aritao station and later, the alleged amount rose to P500.00-1,000.00.
Asked if the trucks pay the amount will no longer pass the weighbridge, Briosos said that he is not also sure because based on the data provided by the station for the months of January and February 2018, the average number of trucks which passed the bridge was 2,000 a month.
The complaining truckers and rice traders alleged that the LTO and DPWH personnel manning the weighbridge station extort P500.00-1,000 per truck and since there are around 1,000 trucks passing through the weighing scale a day, the take in a day runs to P500,000.00-1M.**
