Is VTI bankrupt or being bankrupted?

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

 

For those who dabble in history, even one fact is considered important because together with other small items, eventually create a portrait on canvass where histories are written. As I always emphasize nothing happens in isolation of others – all events are interrelated. Oftentimes a piece completes a picture to tell or confirm a story.

Let us start with an almost ignored incident last week but it triggers an examination of the events of the past months that seemed fuzzy but contained the ingredients of something sinister within the contested company.

I heard about the protest first casually mentioned on radio and then from text messages and finally reported in the newspaper. Sadly the content of the radio and newspaper news were mainly the side of the VTI management. The lop-sidedness of information dished out to the public is unfair.

The news last Friday tells of the one-day stoppage of work (others called it a picket and strike) on Thursday of 20 drivers and conductors of Ceres buses plying Bacolod-Victorias route. They took time to publicly express specific demands to the company.

That they spent time charged to their income to speak publicly means the management of the company did not hear or hearing did not listen to their plight.

The workers asked the management of the Vallacar Transit Inc. to restore the P56 per round trip allowance, which for them is a big help for their family needs in these difficult times.

The memorandum that triggered this protest was issued on December 29, 2020 based on alleged agreement between the VTI management and the labor union, PACWU-TUCP on December (the date in the photocopy is indecipherable) last year.

That agreement authorized the suspension of 50% of the tripping allowance of the drivers and conductors from January to March this year. But that is conditional and uncertain that the workers will get it back at all. The memo says “should the operations return to normalcy upon the start of April 2021, the tripping allowance shall resume and will form part of the operational line expense.”

In effect, the 50% tripping allowance will not be returned directly to the workers. The wording of the memo is double bladed that I wonder why the workers union that is supposed to safeguard the interest of its paying members agreed to this cleverly crafted agreement.

But the workers understood, the reason they are protesting while their union favors the company.

An internet message is specific. It is written in Hiligaynon and I took the liberty of translating it into English for our non-Visayan readers and make sense of the choppy sentences.

“Sir, good afternoon. The situation of VTI now looks bad. Instead of the company helping us because of the pandemic, why are we the drivers and conductors based in Iloilo and the workers as a whole are being made to help the company?

“Our allowance was deducted 50%, the reason being that it will help pay their (company) loan with Yutong and Kinglong.

“This is too far way out from what the father did.”

This is an explosive revelation that I urge the company public relations people of VTI to clarify because the implications are appalling. It in fact supported the theory I raised last year but I will come to that later in this series as the title implies.

At first I was puzzled by the work “yutong” and kinglong” because they are as strange to me as an alien landing from outer space especially because the words were not written as proper nouns and are not native words.

Research showed that “Yutong” is a bus manufacturing company in China with distribution business in the Philippines.

“King Long” is another Chinese bus manufacturer of medium and large sized coaches, which include tour and passenger buses. It is based in Xiamen with exclusive distributorship in the Philippines.

The Iloilo statement is loaded and makes sense of everything – deductions from the tripping allowance of the drivers and conductors will help VTI pay these two Chinese bus manufacturing companies from where VTI apparently purchased on credit. With thousands of employees the collection could be considerable.

The sores speak of the internal disease.

Continued tomorrow.