Philippine jeepney strike largely spares Manila
MANILA, Dec 13 (Reuters) - A nationwide strike on Thursday by operators of Philippine jeepneys largely spared Manila but crippled urban centres outside the capital, forcing thousands who regularly use the passenger vans to walk and hitch rides.
A left-wing group of transport workers, which called the strike to protest high fuel prices, claimed to have paralysed about 90 to 95 percent of traffic in several cities in the Bicol region in the central Philippines and on the southern island of Mindanao.
"It was a success," George San Mateo, leader of the transport group PISTON told reporters, of the protest against the steady rise of prices of fuel products, such as diesel, premium gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas.
San Mateo said his group was ending the one-day strike but would continue to find ways to demand the removal of a 12 percent tax on fuel sales and repeal of a law deregulating the petrol industry, which they blamed for the setting up of an oil cartel.
San Mateo's group is made up of mostly owners and drivers of jeepneys, the colourful mini-buses that are a popular mode of public transport across the Philippines.
Most of them stopped plying their routes as early as 6 a.m. (2200 GMT Wednesday). Several schools, including in Legaspi City in the central Philippines, suspended classes.
In Manila, police fielded buses to ferry hundreds of commuters stranded in some parts of the sprawling metropolis of 12 million people.
But local officials said the strike did not affect much of the city's economic activities.
"They're just putting up a show before the cameras," said Bayani Fernando, chairman of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. "They're trying to show they can paralyse the city. On the contrary, it's business as usual."
There has not been a countrywide transport strike in the Philippines since the early 1980s, when former dictator Ferdinand Marcos was still in power, but recent leaps in the price of oil have stoked anger among transport operators and drivers. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Rajub Gopalakrishnan and Alex Richardson)
A left-wing group of transport workers, which called the strike to protest high fuel prices, claimed to have paralysed about 90 to 95 percent of traffic in several cities in the Bicol region in the central Philippines and on the southern island of Mindanao.
"It was a success," George San Mateo, leader of the transport group PISTON told reporters, of the protest against the steady rise of prices of fuel products, such as diesel, premium gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas.
San Mateo said his group was ending the one-day strike but would continue to find ways to demand the removal of a 12 percent tax on fuel sales and repeal of a law deregulating the petrol industry, which they blamed for the setting up of an oil cartel.
San Mateo's group is made up of mostly owners and drivers of jeepneys, the colourful mini-buses that are a popular mode of public transport across the Philippines.
Most of them stopped plying their routes as early as 6 a.m. (2200 GMT Wednesday). Several schools, including in Legaspi City in the central Philippines, suspended classes.
In Manila, police fielded buses to ferry hundreds of commuters stranded in some parts of the sprawling metropolis of 12 million people.
But local officials said the strike did not affect much of the city's economic activities.
"They're just putting up a show before the cameras," said Bayani Fernando, chairman of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. "They're trying to show they can paralyse the city. On the contrary, it's business as usual."
There has not been a countrywide transport strike in the Philippines since the early 1980s, when former dictator Ferdinand Marcos was still in power, but recent leaps in the price of oil have stoked anger among transport operators and drivers. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Rajub Gopalakrishnan and Alex Richardson)
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