Ayuda to die for

Instead of securing fleeting relief from the scourge of high fuel prices, a motorcycle taxi rider succumbed to the heat and the anxiety of the long line to obtain P5,000 in a government dole, and he was not the first.

The Marcos administration balked at adjusting the excise tax, citing the loss of revenue and opted instead to give more ayuda, which guarantees patronage and optics on the side.

The rider’s death at Quezon Memorial Circle was the result of bureaucratic greed and indifference.

Under a blistering sun, the man collapsed while standing in line for the government’s P5,000 handout, part of its frantic scramble to appease the rising outrage over the soaring fuel prices.

Weeks earlier, a jeepney driver fainted in the same punishing queue at the same circle, his seizure triggered by the heat and the wait.

Meanwhile, a sick tricycle driver died in the hospital after his daughter was barred from claiming his aid on his behalf.

The contemptible instances are not isolated tragedies but the predictable result of a policy that treats working Filipinos as supplicants rather than as citizens entitled to relief that does not necessitate risking their lives.

The government’s stubborn refusal to cut the excise tax, or the value-added tax (VAT), on fuel has forced thousands of motorcycle taxi riders, jeepney, taxi and bus drivers, and delivery workers to congregate at four overcrowded distribution points in Metro Manila.

Romeo Maglungsod, chairman of the Motorcycle Taxi Community Philippines, said the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) simply dumped unverified lists from transport network companies into the system, including the dead and inactive drivers.

The result was chaos as over 200,000 legitimate riders lined up for hours at Quezon Memorial Circle under the extreme heat.

The inflation-impacted workers baked outside like “fish laid out in the sun,” in Maglungsod’s bitter phrase, denied even the dignity of shade while government clerks processed paperwork at a glacial pace.

It was an expensive, inefficient and now lethal theater. Economic managers in Malacañang insisted that scrapping the excise tax would mostly benefit “the wealthy.” The claim is a sick joke.

Motorcycle taxi riders who once earned P1,500 to P2,500 a day are not oligarchs; they are the backbone of the meager transport system that keeps the country moving.

A tax cut would have delivered immediate relief at the pump, roughly P10 per liter from VAT alone, without forcing anyone to choose between earning a living and taking the punishment of standing in line for alms.

Instead, the administration chose the ayuda route. The humiliation is not new, especially for the physically vulnerable.

Reports also surfaced of elderly and disabled beneficiaries collapsing in other lines. The DSWD eventually had to issue advisories allowing representatives to claim the aid because seniors and PWDs were literally dying while waiting.

The message to those who must endure the long queues is that physical and social disabilities do not exempt one from the ordeal of begging.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s economic team keeps insisting that targeted subsidies are smarter than broad tax relief. The tragedies in aid lines prove otherwise.

When a jeepney driver collapses, when a motorcycle rider dies, the government reacts with condolences and funeral assistance, as if a coffin and a few thousand pesos retroactively will fix a policy that treats human dignity as an afterthought.

“It seems the government only acts when someone dies,” Maglungsod put it plainly.

Line them up. Make them wait. Blame the heat. Issue a statement. Repeat.