Why do we need barkers at jeepney terminals?

RE pedestrians blind not to notice which jeepney to take to their destination? Are barkers really necessary? You see them practically everywhere, not just at jeepney stations – where there are terminals for taxis, express vans, buses, tricycles, there are barkers shouting at the top of their voices to call for passengers coming from all direc in Manila, for instance, you can see two to three barkers at different spots at any given time, multi-tasking as parking attendants and tourism assistants, if not motel tipsters.

I won’t be surprised if I learn that they’re also peddling illegal drugs or acting as tong collectors for pot-bellied Positioned at strategic street corners all day, many of them could offer or deliver more than what might be expected of them by clueless pedestrians, passengers, bystanders or mere passersby.

Barkers may be regarded as a usual example of the underemployed Filipino, though they’re better off than - die. He’s a barker who boasts of earning more than P650 net a day, more than what an employee of a print fact is an employee of that copy shop who regularly trades with Eddie to split his large bills into loose change.

his daily intake. But why can’t the wellknown establishments in that area offer people like him additional work to boost his income, say for instance, cleaning their front premises? If you of litter that get dumped there every day. Indeed, it’s a microcosm of the dirty urban street scene we see in different parts of Metro Manila, you wonder whether it is due to the negligence of or quality of the leadership of government leaders, or both, at the national and local levels?

Of course, there’s no doubt about it.

your everyday unemployed workers who continue to dream of a better life, but meanwhile work as barkers or something similar.

We should be happy about some hope in life, unlike Japan, which has logged an annual average of 30,000 suicides over the past years, although the trend has gone down as it did in 2014, when the average dropped to 25,000.

But that’s still an average of 70 Japanese deaths a day, which was highlighted last year by the “grim self-immolation of a 71-year-old man aboard a Japanese bullet train,” according to a

- pinos survive poverty, depression, lawlessness, among other things, with the belief that suicide is considered a mortal sin. On the other hand, many Japanese still subscribe - puku” or honorable death.

Now, just because we have elected strongman Rodrigo Duterte as President, I hope people don’t advocate a radical rethinking of eliminating poverty by assisted suicide. If the barkers are already on the streets, ex- posing themselves to smog and other elements, why should anyone think of cities and localities, and the barker’s role in all that.

transport terminal barkers to perform formal, paid jobs like sweeping the streets of litter and possibly serving as of all kinds of obstructions. If you can’t still appreciate the logic of this humble idea of shooting two birds with one stone (giving jobs and ensuring road order) to barkers, then why should we pretend to accept that Duterte can do the job as leader at the national level?

salaries of our policemen and teachers, if Duterte wants it that way. Perhaps that will help solve the problem of corruption and the low quality of our education, among other issues. But if all of our streets and other public places are clean, peaceful, and orderly, and if you take out thousands of dilapidated jeepneys clogging our roadways, then maybe that would also help us become an economically progressive country.

Another obvious issue is conges a direct result of undisciplined public transport drivers, sidewalk street ven problem can easily be resolved by en the letter and spirit of the law.