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On one hand, drivers in protest were threatened by the prospect of
losing their individual franchises if they fail to form cooperatives. On
the other hand, they were burdened with coughing out P800.00 per
day or P20,000.00 per month or more in the next seven years to
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pay for their bank loans.

Although the early adapters may have found the program more
benecial than what they expected, the government nevertheless
should not just ignore those who chose to wait it out, having resisted
the shift that seemed to favor big and well-connected industry
players.

In any case, those who chose to resist and/or wait it out weren't
exactly wrong to do so. At the Senate deliberations on the proposed
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2020 budget for the Department of Transportation (DOTr) , it was
discovered that investments for PUV modernization that was rolled
out beginning 2017 was able to fund only two per cent of the needed
number of modern PUVs.

To make matters worse, the proposed budget for 2020 contains no
new funding for the PUV phase out, in effect compromising a
program that is up for completion next year. At this current rate, the
PUV modernization will never be completed in the remaining two and
a half years of the Duterte administration.

Social dialogue failed in this case because the jeepney modernization
program was foisted upon a reluctant partner, not because they
rejected modernization as a policy, but mainly because the
government has favoured big players and negatively viewed those
who chose to wait and see.

IV. OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSION

A California-based group of researchers has conducted a study on
Just Transition based on their actual implementations at workplace
and community levels. The study included the evaluation of policy

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