Jeepney coop says shared ownership advantageous

A JEEPNEY cooperative chairman said that their organization and its members share ownership of their fleet of vehicles.

“All of us own the units and the business that we started … we are all businessmen,” Pagunova Transport and Multi-Purpose Service Cooperative chairman Leonard Bautista told The Manila Times in Filipino.

He said the cooperative’s earnings were used to pay for the vehicles.

“What’s nice here is that the operator or driver is not the one who should pay the units, but what the cooperative earns is what is used to pay for these. What’s also good is that almost P1,000 per day is what the cooperative should earn to pay for the units. This can be done because that is the boundary of what we do with the traditional jeepneys back then,” Bautista said.

Bautista added that transitioning from traditional to modern jeepneys under the government’s public utility vehicle modernization program (PUVMP) was not easy.

“It was so difficult because they (the operators) were wondering why we wanted to consolidate first, but the [PUVMP] hasn’t even started yet. In 2019, that was the time we were already asked to modernize, but what our group did was to do it anyway because we wanted to earn a living,” he said.

Resistance initially came from their former operators, but most eventually joined their cooperative.

Bautista said earning bigger is a remote possibility under the traditional system.

“While it’s lucky that the operators earn P7,000 to P10,000 per month, that still feels lacking. When it comes to the traditional jeepney driver, we feel the same. They only earn P600 to P800; maybe if the driver is working from early morning until nighttime, they can earn up to P1,500, but they only earn P750 per day if they have to earn a living every other day,” he said.

Bautista said that, in contrast, their drivers working from 4 a.m. to 2 p.m. could earn P1,200P1,400 per day if they meet the P8,000 quota.

“Some drivers earn big, some earn small, but not going below the minimum wage, with the smallest being P800 per day, because we have a quota system that when the earnings are small, you fall under the minimum. And when you want to earn more, you need more passengers,” he added.