Pinoys back to work but holiday rush continues for New Year

It’s back to work this Wednesday but more than 100,000 passengers were at the Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange (PITX) on Tuesday as the holiday rush continues for the New Year.

According to James Agustin’s report on “State of the Nation”, a total of 168,400 passengers were recorded in the land terminal as of 9 p.m.

Most of the passengers were traveling to their respective provinces ahead of the  New Year’s Eve celebration.

To deal with the influx of commuters, PITX deployed an additional 30 buses per day to augment their regular trips.

Despite this, scheduled land trips to Bicol are already fully booked.

Some passengers who failed to secure tickets opted to stay in PITX as they waited for additional trips on the daily schedule.

“Mahirap dahil nakikisabayan kami sa mga dumarating na pasahero ganyan kaya mahirap. Magtitiyaga na lang kami para makauwi ng Bicol,” an elderly passenger said.

(It's difficult because there are a lot of passengers. We will just wait here just so we can go home to Bicol.)

Meanwhile, passengers continue to troop to seaports in Luzon for the holidays as per a report of Paul Hernandez of GMA Regional TV Balitang Southern Tagalog on “State of the Nation” on Tuesday.

At the Batangas Port, long lines of passengers formed at the waiting area, departure area, ticketing booths, and even at ambulant tellers.

Around 5,000 outbound passengers, were reported in the Port of Calapan in Oriental Mindoro. The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) Mindoro assured the situation in the port remains manageable.

In Quezon, the operations in the Port of Lucena are still normal with two shipping lines ferrying passengers to their island destinations.

Meanwhile, strong waves lengthened trips at the Matnog Port in Sorsogon but no trips were canceled as of reporting.

The PPA said it is preparing for the possible surge of passengers in seaports on January 2, 2024, as the holiday break ends.—RF, GMA Integrated News