Reasons Why Fixing Activities Thrive in the LTFRB-CAR (Part 1)
The arrest of two (2) LTFRB fixers for Estafa last 25 May 2015 by elements of the CIDG in Baguio, by virtue of warrants issued by the Regional Trial Court in Baguio City supposedly should serve as a lesson or deterrence for other fixers in this agency to stop this pernicious and illegal practice. But bet you, it will not. Fixing has been so rampant and pervasive ever since, it will not see the end of day by mere arrests and prosecutions of a few fixers.
Why? Here are some of the causes why fixing thrives in the LTFRB-CAR and will surely continue to thrive notwithstanding Rep. Act. 9485 that threatens to punish fixers of up to six (6) years imprisonment or a fine of P200,000.00 or both (if caught!):
1. Foremost, the Regional Directors who keep on denying the existence of fixing activities in their turfs are either involve or are tolerating it or perhaps both, for different reasons of their own.
2. Fixing will continue to thrive as long as LTFRB personnel, save some, will remain fixing themselves or be in cahoots with outside fixers and lawyers cuddling the fixers.
3. Several lawyers practicing in the LTFRB have long been allowing themselves to be used by fixer as cover to lend legitimacy to their acts, by affixing their signatures as alleged counsel in the pleadings prepared by fixers and personnel for a minimal fee of from P300 to P500 and, by representing the clients of the fixers and personnel in the quasi judicial hearings of CPC applications without knowing or meeting the applicants who are sometimes the vendors and the vendees who are supposed to appear in the hearings.
4. Worst of all, the operators or associations of operators prefer to cater or engage the services of fixers rather than experience the trauma of dealing with government personnel’s abuses.
5. In complaints for irregularities of government agencies and personnel file by aggrieved taxpayers, disciplining authorities instead of protecting the interest of the complainant people, would rather side or serve the interest of the bureaucracy thereby cleansing the abuses and anomalies committed therein and setting the culprits free in the process.
(to be continued in the next issue— jsv)
