City police officer-in-charge, Senior Supt. Ricardo de la Paz, has ordered the Bacolod City Police Office Traffic Management Unit to form a ten-man task force to arrest the jeepney barkers, who call passengers to board public utility vehicles and charge drivers for it.

TMU head, Chief Insp. Levy Pangue said that, effective today, the task force members will arrest the barkers who will no longer be allowed at the main thoroughfares.

Only legal dispatchers, who belong to an organization, will be allowed in Bacolod City, Pangue stressed.

De la Paz said the barkers who will be arrested will be brought to the BCPO headquarters, where they will be warned that if they continue to ask money from the drivers, they will be arrested as well as charged.

He said drivers of public utility vehicles are complaining because they could no longer raise their supposed income as the barkers are forcing them to give them money.

Aside from that, de la Paz said there are also barkers who threaten the drivers who refuse to give them money, while others vandalize the vehicles of those who do not give in to their demands.

Some of these barkers are former convicts, while some have no other means of livelihood, he added.

De la Paz said the public does not need the services of barkers and that their operation is also illegal based on a city ordinance. He also said there are authorized dispatchers at the terminals.*APN

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