(Eagle News) – President Rodrigo Duterte led the opening on Monday, Nov. 5, of the Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange, (PITX), the country’s first landport that will provide comfort to the riding public coming to and from the southern part of Luzon.
The PITX is a project done under his administration’s Build, Build Build program that promises to accommodate a total of 100,000 passengers daily, and decrease traffic in Metro Manila.
In his speech during the PITX inauguration, the President congratulated the Department of Transportation headed by Secretary Art Tugade, and the government’s private partner, MWM Terminals, Inc, for the “landmark project.”
“As the first integrated and multi-modal terminal in the southwestern part of Metro Manila, PITX is a landmark project – a ‘landport’ that feels and functions like an airport.
Duterte said that the PITX is just “one of the three intermodal terminals to be developed by the government in cooperation with the private sector.”
“This will offer passengers a safer, state-of-the-art, and convenient terminal experience that will hopefully contribute in addressing traffic congestion in Metro Manila,” he said.
“This will help ease traffic by limiting provincial buses plying Metro Manila roads, specifically along Roxas Boulevard and the EDSA-Taft area. It will also serve as a transfer point between the provincial buses from Cavite, western Batangas, and other in-city modes of transportation,” he explained.
The facility features departure and arrival bays for buses, jeepneys and taxis. It will also provide “state-of-the-art bus reservation and online booking,” centralized ticketing booth, modern restrooms with shower rooms, escalators, elevators, 24 hour CCTV cameras, organized loading and unloading bays, among others.
Duterte himself tried its centralized ticketing booths and was impressed with the service, including the touch-screen computers used for the convenience of paying passengers.
At the start of his speech, he recounted how Tugade had told him that the project had not been tainted with corruption, while at the same time revealing how impressed he was with the performance of the private contractor whose previous offer to help him in the campaign he had flatly rejected.
Alam mo sabi ni Secretary Tugade walang corruption ‘yan. If I may, without offending anybody, any of you… Alam mo noong eleksyon ang contribution nila na ibinigay sa akin hindi ko tinanggap. Just to tell you any ano — tales can be weaved around a certain contract or the winning contractor. Sabihin ko sa inyo a lot of them isa na sila, hindi ako tumatanggap,” the President said.
“Sabi ko ‘it’s okay, maybe with a shoestring budget I can make it.” Para maklaro lahat. So I am impressed, I am proud na ginawa nila itong magandang structure. And it will serve the Filipino and that is what’s very important to me.”
During his speech on Monday, the President also directed the DoTr and the MWM Terminals to “implement the necessary measures to ensure all transport vehicles will be using the PITX are roadworthy that complies with our environmental laws and [have] proper documentation.”
“With the Build, Build, Build program in full swing, I assure our people that the government is exerting all efforts to construct the necessary infrastructure that would sustain our country’s continued development,” he said.
“Together, let us work hard to lay down the physical foundations of a more progressive and prosperous nation so that our countrymen will enjoy at the very least not a rich life, not even a bar lower than that, but at least — most of them are poor — but we can assure them of a comfortable — just a comfortable life.”
(Eagle News Service)
