ILOILO – The provincial government’s Task Force on Overloading and the Philippine National Police apprehended 313 vehicles in 2018 for violating a provincial ordinance against overloading.
Gov. Arthur Defensor Sr. established the task force on Dec. 29, 2017 to regulate sand and gravel quarrying in the province.
Quarry operators used trucks to haul quarried materials; in the past, these vehicles tended to overload.
Another goal of the task force was to protect the roads; overloaded quarry trucks were among the reasons for the fast deterioration of roads.
The task force was placed under the supervision of the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO).
According to Lamberto Marin Jr., officer-in-charge of PENRO’s Mines Division, P857,000 in fines were collected by the task force and the police last year from the apprehended overloaded vehicles.
The fines were shared by the provincial government (30 percent), police (30 percent), and municipalities and barangays (20 percent each) where the quarry materials of the apprehended trucks were taken.
Aside from overloading, the task force was also mandated to check the papers of the quarry trucks, particularly the delivery receipts if these were tampered, open-dated or mis-declared.
Under the provincial ordinance, these were the fines violators must pay:
* first offense – P1,000
* second offense – P3,000
* third offense – P5,000
Quarry operators that incurred more than three violations risked the nonrenewal of their quarry permits for a year.
“We are hoping nga mangin masinulondan na ang aton haulers this 2019,” said Marin./PN
