THE monthly income of the Davao City Overland Transport Terminal has tremendously increased so much so that the quota for the entire 2010 has been reached and overshot as early as the first 10 months of the year.
This is the good news. The bad news is that all kinds of illegal schemes and unauthorized money-making activities abound within and around the 40-year old DCOTT, more popularly as Ecoland Terminal.
Appearing during the Club 888 business and tourism forum at the Marco Polo Hotel last Wednesday, DCOTT chief Yusop Jimlani reported that his office had collected a total of P18,295,429 from January to October, showing an increase of P4,295,429 or 31 percent more than the quota for the entire year.
Jimlani, a retired Philippine Army colonel, was tapped by then mayor, now Vice Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte, to manage the terminal, in addition to his job as drainage czar last March. Upon assumption to office, Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio allowed Jimlani to continue serving as DCOTT manager.
He told newsmen attending Club 888 he was confident his office would be able to collect P2 million to P4 million more during the remaining two months of the year.
The bulk of the increase in the terminal’s income was mostly attributed to vigorous collection efforts of Jimlani’s staff from stall or store renters in the terminal who were mostly having arrearages of up to four years.
Claiming they were losing, many delinquent renters were not even paying for their electrical consumption. He said there are a total of 166 commercial establishments inside DCOTT. Add to them, some 250 authorized vendors and 160 registered porters.
Jimlani said many of vendors and porters have been accused of pestering the passengers, with some virtually forcing passengers to buy their wares. He said his office has received so many verified complaints about the abuses of porters and peddlers.
Sometimes, the Civil Security Unit (CSU) assigned to maintain order in the DCOTT is not effective because some CSU members are themselves involved in peddling and other unauthorized activities, Jimlani charged.
He said he had used diplomacy in solving the problem of lack of discipline and violations in the conduct of some peddlers and porters. He said he had conducted no less than 10 times and signed memoranda of agreement with the erring personalities, aside from making appeals to the organizations to police their own ranks.
“It’s a cat and mouse thing in the terminal,” the DCOTT chief bared, saying that the erring parties would vow to follow rules, but resume their illegal activities when the CSU members and his staff are not looking.
Of all the problems however the worse pertains to the operation of illegal or colorum passenger vans.
He said these involve vans who are not soliciting passengers within any of the four authorized van terminals in the city – the ones at SM City Mall, the one at the corner of McArthur Highway and Tulip Drive and the terminal at the Victoria Plaza.
The colorum vans usually circle the terminal or park near it and send solicitors inside the DCOTT to convince passengers to patronize them because they collect lower fares.
He said the DCOTT and the Traffic Management Center under retired police colonel Desiderio Cloribel launched a joint drive against colorum vans.
As a result of the campaign, the TMC had been able to apprehend a total of 61 colorum vans from October 1 to November 22.
He said that some government officials are involved in the illegal operation of the passenger vans. In fact, he said, Cloribel’s operatives have been able to arrest a barangay councilman engaged in the illegal activity with him driving the van himself.
Jimlani said one official was making P45,000 from the illegal operation.
Jimlani said he and Cloribel are aware that many people are unhappy about the reforms they are instituting in the DCOTT.
“Their first move was to circulate rumors that I was building a money-making mafia in the terminal,” he said.
He said these people did not realize that as a lieutenant, he had managed the barter trade center in Zamboanga City whose operations involved billions of pesos. “If I wanted to make money then, I could have done it, but I did not.”
When the rumors and intrigues did not work, Jimlani and Cloribel reportedly began getting death threats through mobile phone messages. [AMA]
