13 Years on the Road for a Cause

Organized drivers and operators do not just ply their routes to make ends meet. In Negros Island, they also help create the road to social change, making sure that those who join them are not taken for a ride.

BY KARL G. OMBION
Bulatlat.com/Cobra-ans

Thirteenth anniversary caravan of the United Negros Drivers and Operators Center (UNDOC) in the streets of Bacolod City.      Photo by Karl G. Ombion

BACOLOD CITY - The United Negros Drivers and Operators Center (UNDOC) was organized on Oct. 23, 1990 by a handful of drivers and concerned professionals, to discuss issues and concerns of drivers and small operators. It also served as a mechanism for organizing the transport sector in their struggle for jobs, rights, just transport laws, policies and ordinances.

UNDOC struggled in its early years, getting only occasional contributions from drivers and small operators. This did not deter its founders from building the organization, however.

The fruits of their hard work are seen in UNDOC's organizational strength. Today, it has 38 local affiliate drivers-operators organizations in Negros Occidental and at least two big transport organizations in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental with some 6,000 individual members. UNDOC is affiliated with the national transport alliance Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (Piston).

Since the middle of the 1990s, UNDOC has led successful province- and island-wide transport strikes and protest actions ranging from issues of oil price hikes, rerouting, fake vehicle franchises, drug-test, smoke belching test, to supporting the struggles of other basic sectors, especially the urban poor's fight against demolition, and the commercial-based service workers' struggle for jobs, wages and rights.

The latest transport strike was on Feb. 21- 22 this year. UNDOC, in cooperation with big transport operators, rallied against the planned smoke-belching test. The strike forced the Department of Transportation and Communication (DoTC) to send one of its top officials to Bacolod City and to heed the drivers' demand to suspend the implementation of smoke-belching test.

Rommel Santillan, UNDOC's education staff and one of its pioneering organizers, said, "It's difficult to handle drivers, especially the unorganized and with low political consciousness. If you don't have the guts you would likely surrender. But it's gratifying that the core leaders of UNDOC have remained intact and resolute."

For his part, UNDOC Secretary General Jesse Ortega stressed that the organization's 13th anniversary is "a day of learning lessons and strengthening our unity as we know the tasks facing the transport sector especially the poor drivers and small operators become enormous and complicated with each passing day." Bulatlat.com

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