Who wants law and order to prevail in city streets? Everybody does, we’re sure. But there’s a correct way to do it, and certainly not by indiscriminate and even abusive clearing operations.
We raise this amid what seems to be overbearing traffic management policies of the Metro Manila Development Authority that overstep the limits of its legal mandate.
YouTube videos show MMDA enforcers swooping down on city streets and issuing tickets to drivers still in their vehicles in designated no-parking zones and towing away unattended ones.
Those unlucky enough to be caught in streets designated as Mabuhay Lanes have to cough up P3,000 as fine for illegal parking, and go out of their way to retrieve their vehicles in an impounding area in a desolate part of Marikina City.
What the MMDA should review in their clearing operations is that their uniformed personnel even impose the hefty fine for illegal parking even on drivers of hospital ambulances and firetrucks.
At Banawe street in Quezon City where the National Orthopedic Center is located, every day there are ambulances parked in the vicinity of the medical facility that treats patients with bone fractures and other emergency cases.
But the MMDA insists on issuing a ticket for illegal parking even if the ambulance driver is bringing his patient to the hospital for treatment or waiting for a recovering patient to be discharged.
In another video, MMDA storm troopers are seen being ordered to tow a parked firetruck right on Claro M. Recto Ave. near Divisoria.
Apparently, traffic enforcers are under overly strict orders to spare no one from fines or have their vehicles towed outright to an impounding area in Marikina City.
The motorcycles parked in an urban poor area in Tondo district in Manila are not spared either from the MMDA’s heavy-handed approach to law enforcement.
Another recent incident with no less than the head of the MMDA’s clearing operations berating a police captain who had parked his motorcycle in front of the police office where he worked highlighted the draconian measures of the agency in enforcing the rules when compassion and understanding would have been the better approach.
The MMDA had also implemented a few years back the No-Contact Apprehension Policy that utilized closed-circuit TV to catch traffic violators. But concerned citizens raised a furor against the arbitrary policy and asked the Supreme Court to stop its implementation.
The MMDA should rethink its urban clearing policies that target the poor and the powerless.
In effect, what the agency is doing is punishing the people for the failure of the national and local governments to craft a comprehensive development plan for Metro Manila that takes into account humane and compassionate traffic management.
Or is the MMDA implementing a quota system where the only criterion is to issue as many traffic citations on a daily basis and increase its collection of fines from already harassed drivers and ordinary citizens trying to make an honest living?
Last we looked, the MMDA is still implementing an executive order from the Duterte administration that decrees an extensive and no-holds-barred clearing operations in Metro Manila marked by indiscriminate and grave abuse of power.
We’re not against restoring law and order in city streets. We’re for implementing the law with utmost respect for human rights and due process.
