In a report from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the MMDA has temporarily stopped issuing new number coding exemptions as it reviews the whole policy.
MMDA officer in charge and general manager Tim Orbos said on Saturday that the review was necessary because of a surge in applications from private motorists in recent months.
According to him, given the sudden increase in vehicles in Metro Manila, the granting of exemptions “might defeat the purpose” of the number coding scheme. However, he did not say how many applications the MMDA has received.
Under the traffic scheme officially known as the Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program (UVVRP), among those who can apply for exemption are media personnel using their private cars for work, medical practitioners responding to emergency cases and owners of vehicles ferrying individuals in need of immediate medical attention. Automatically exempted are emergency vehicles and government service and diplomatic vehicles, among others.
Though it is indeed necessary to review the process as there may already be a huge number of undeserved exemptions, it feels wrong to target doctors and medical practitioners. We know for a fact that our country has a shortage of doctors and nurses because of the benefits of working outside of the Philippines—further burden will only lead to disappointment and probably more ineffective medical services.
Then again, most government agencies are only concerned about their specific responsibilities and rarely about the bigger picture.