POLICE yesterday described as orderly the first day of implementation of the “No Vaccination, No Ride” policy of the Department of Transportation (DOTr) in the National Capital Region.
Lt. Col. Joel Mendoza, chief of the PNP Highway Patrol Group-NCR, said that while police accosted unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated individuals who were caught riding public utility vehicles (PUVs), “there was no heated argument between our personnel and the people.”
“Its implementation was successful so far. People cooperated with us in the implementation of the no vaccination, no ride policy,” Mendoza told a phone interview when asked for his initial assessment of the DOTr directive.
Mendoza said partially vaccinated commuters who were accosted by HPG personnel were “confused” about who were covered by the restriction.
“Some individuals who rode public transportation vehicles have yet to be vaccinated.
Others only got their first dose of two-dose vaccines. We explained to them that under the no vaccination, no ride policy, those allowed to ride public transportation are fully vaccinated,” he said.
Mendoza said passengers who were accosted were requested to alight from the vehicles and asked to go home, “which they heeded.”
“We just warned them and since they are going to take public vehicles back to their homes, what we did is we assigned our available vehicles to transport them, bring them near their homes,” said Mendoza.
Lt. Col. Jenny Tecson, spokeswoman of the National Capital Region Police Office, made a similar assessment. “As of this time, the first day of the implementation of the vaccination, no ride policy of the DOTr was orderly,” Tecson said.
“As of 4 p.m., we have not arrested anyone though we accosted some. We just warned them and after they were warned, they heeded our request (to go home),” she said.
Mendoza could not immediately cite the exact number of accosted individuals as random inspections of public transportation vehicles were still ongoing as of yesterday afternoon.
In Muntinlupa City, the Muntinlupa Traffic Management Bureau (MTMB) and the Land Transportation Office (LTO) conducted surprise inspections of the city’s transport terminals.
Tez Navarro, public information officer of Muntinlupa City, said: “Members of LTO and MTMB visited transport terminals in Muntinlupa and have conducted surprise inspection in different areas to ensure the strict enforcement of (the) policy in the city.”
The no vaccination, no ride policy was introduced by the DOTr as a strategy to control the exponential spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Metro Manila and protect persons who have not been inoculated against the deadly virus.
Under the DOTr policy, unvaccinated individuals will not be allowed to ride any land, sea and air public transportation, except if they have medical conditions that prevent them from getting vaccinated and those on essential travel, in Metro Manila.
The policy will be in effect while the NCR is under Alert Level 3 or when its quarantine status is escalated to a higher level.
Meanwhile, Marinduque Gov. Presbitero Velasco Jr said he has asked mayors in the province to adopt the DOTr policy amid the surge of COVID-19 cases in the province.
“I encouraged, I already asked our municipal mayors and the Sangguniang Bayans to come up with their respective ordinances. We need this strategy to hasten the vaccination (of our people),” Velasco told a radio interview.
Velasco said mayors have the prerogative to introduce modifications, including requiring unvaccinated drivers of public transport vehicles to take antigen tests every other two weeks before they are allowed to ply their routes.
“This no vaccination, no ride policy is a good policy to force the unvaccinated to get inoculated,” said Velasco, adding it’s important to send the message to the unvaccinated that some of their privileges will be taken away from them if they refuse to get vaccinated.
Velasco said the province had zero COVID-19 active case before Christmas day.
“(But) As of now, we now have more than 80 RT-PCR positive,” said Velasco. He said some 160 others also recently tested positive in antigen testing. — with Noel Talacay
