PNR: Pinabayaan National Railways
What is happening to the state-run Philippine National Railways (PNR)? I ended up asking this question at the end of the litany of woes poured out by union leaders headed by Edgar Bilayon, president of the Bagong Kapisanan ng mga Manggagawa sa PNR (BKMP) during our weekly breakfast forum Kapihan sa
Manila Bay last Wednesday. Out of 1,600 workers and employees of the PNR, we were shocked to learn from Bilayon that 1,400 of them, including train drivers, mechanics and engineers are all employed on job orders (JO). The more infamous term for this JO is the much hated “end of contract,” or endo for short.
Only 200 of the PNR workers, who included Bilayon and their union officers, have plantilla positions in this government railway service utility. This was after the Department of Budget and Management collapsed 3,200 plantilla positions in 2005 as one of the ways to help improve the poor financial condition of the PNR. Thus, the 1,400 PNR workers, we were told, have been employed under JO system since then up to now.
This was how Bilayon described the plight of most PNR workers who are toiling under slavery-like conditions as a means of calling the attention of President Rodrigo Duterte to take action and immediately relieve PNR general manager Junn Magno for utter neglect of the PNR workforce, not to mention an alleged graft and corruption complaint.
When President Duterte took over in June 2016, Bilayon and their fellow PNR workers literally saw the light at the end of the tunnel when the new administration identified as among its priority program of government to modernize the country’s railway system. Towards this end, administration officials led by Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Arturo Tugade started the train wheels, so to speak, to negotiate funding for the modernization program of the PNR.
Bilayon learned the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is scheduled to begin with the modernization program for the PNR by the first quarter of 2019. But for now, PNR commuter passengers will continue to bear with six train sets, with a total of at least 30 coaches, rolling at 30-minute intervals from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.
When I was still in college, I used to take the PNR commuter trains to avoid traffic gridlocks in Metro Manila. Besides, it was cheaper than riding jeepneys. But we have to bear with over packed rides.
At the Kapihan sa Manila Bay media forum at Café Adriatico in Malate, Bilayon assailed the seeming couldnot-care-less attitude of the PNR general manager on the plight of government workers serving every day as many as 75,000 commuter train passengers.
Does President Duterte even know this endo practice has been exploiting no less than the lowly government workers at the PNR? For sure, President Duterte is not even aware of this situation because the people he trusts to implement the government policy against endo glossed over them. “This is the biggest anomaly going on at the PNR,” Bilayon decried.
For the past 33 years, Bilayon has been employed at the PNR. He was still a working student in college when he got hired as electrician in 1985. Through the years, he got promoted and his present post is at the PNR asset management department. Several times, he got elected as union leader and taking up the cudgels for his fellow PNR workers.
Despite their needs not being attended to by their agency chief executive officer, Bilayon cited, PNR workers have not resorted to any protest actions that would disrupt the commuter services. For now, the union members stage only silent protest pickets in front of Magno’s office in Tutuban every Wednesday during noontime break to dramatize their appeal to the sevenman PNR Board of Directors headed by retired police Gen. Roberto Lastimoso.
The PNR union already sought the guidance from the Civil Service Commission (CSC) about this JO system.
They were advised that the matter has already been turned over to the PNR management for their proper disposition.
As per CSC advice, Bilayon said, they have been requesting Magno to convene the change management team tasked to determine what positions could be restored now that the PNR’s financial health has been improved. Much of the financial improvements came from proceeds in the sale and commercial lease of several prime real estate properties in Tutuban, Paco and other lands along the 1,300-kilometer long rail tracks of the PNR.
According to Bilayon, they have also brought their complaint before the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission that President Duterte created to go after grafters among his presidential appointees. In particular, their union filed a formal complaint against the incumbent PNR general manager for certain questionable deals he entered into recently.
This include the PNR purchase of P2 billion worth of six diesel-fed locomotive trains, with six coaches, each coming from Indonesia. The locomotives are supposedly scheduled for delivery in 2019. As far as he knows, there is a standing offer of donation coming from Japan but which was ignored allegedly by Magno.
Also, they took to task Magno for not acting on their reports about commercial billboards put up on PNR properties, which could provide additional source of non-train revenues.
Bilayon estimates PNR earns as much as P30 million a month from train revenues but this is just enough to pay for personnel salaries and wages, for operations and maintenance of existing trains and tracks. But through the years of mismanagement for the longest time, he lamented, has brought this present dismal working condition at the PNR.
This has been tragically the situation of the 126-year old PNR.
Veteran reporter Aya Yupangco from DWIZ could not help but deplore the situation at the state-run PNR as Pinabayaan (loosely translated means neglected) National Railways. For how long such neglect will go on, Bilayon still believes PNR can still be saved by managers who are more qualified than the present ones now running the agency.
This has been tragically the situation of the 126-year old PNR.