(CNN Philippines, January 5) — Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation is not laying off its expressway workers despite the government’s push for a cashless payment system across Luzon’s toll roads, its top official said on Tuesday.
Although the Department of Transportation’s mandate to embrace cashless transactions in tollways is now on full throttle, MPTC President Rodrigo Franco said the group did not implement layoffs.
“No workers so far lost their jobs,” he told CNN Philippines in a message via smartphone.
Franco noted the group has more than 700 tellers in its tollway business.
The executive also said MPTC was able to avoid cutting its workforce as employees initially assigned to toll collection were deployed to other assignments.
“Others remained as tellers because a few cash lanes were retained … Some are assisting on RFID (radio-frequency identification) transactions in the lanes,” he said.
Franco said during a Senate hearing in December the group was planning to train its workers so they could be re-deployed to other job functions.
MPTC, the road infrastructure arm of conglomerate Metro Pacific Investments Corp., holds long-term concessions in the Philippines to operate the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX), Subic Clark Tarlac Expressway, and the Cavite Expressway.
Its unit NLEX Corp. faced the ire of Valenzuela Mayor City Rex Gatchalian earlier in December as the latter claimed the firm’s faulty cashless system caused heavy traffic in the city.
NLEX Corp. argued the glitches witnessed across its toll gates were only “birth pains” following the hasty decision of the DOTr to fully implement the cashless shift.
The company reopened its cash lanes last month to ease traffic flow on the NLEX.
