Isko Moreno tips his hat to Manila’s jeepney drivers as Libreng Sakay heads into second week

Manila City Mayor Francisco “Isko” Moreno Domagoso took a moment during Monday’s flag-raising ceremony at Manila City Hall to personally thank the jeepney drivers powering the city’s “Libreng Sakay” free ride program, asking the crowd of city government employees gathered before him to give the men behind the wheel a round of applause as the program entered its second week of operations.

“Nasaan man kayo ngayon, I, as your mayor, would like to thank each and every one of you, on behalf of the people of Manila and to those people who come in and out of the city, for delivering free services to the riding public another week,” Domagoso said.

The tribute came as the Libreng Sakay program resumed on Monday, April 6, fulfilling the Mayor’s earlier promise to run the initiative for at least five days across two weeks.

By 6:00 a.m. — just one hour after operations began at 5:00 a.m. — 3,377 individual passengers had already been served by 218 participant drivers, a figure Domagoso said he expected to climb significantly as the day progressed.

The Mayor also used the occasion to share fresh figures on the program’s overall impact, revealing that approximately 365,000 passengers had been served in the first two days of operations — March 30 and 31 — at a total cost of less than ₱8 million to the city government.

Breaking that down, he noted that the cost worked out to roughly ₱25 per passenger served. “About 365,000 of the riding public benefited in two days that only cost us less than 8 million pesos,” he said.

Domagoso was equally enthusiastic about the ripple effects of the program, describing it as a rare initiative designed to deliver guaranteed benefits to multiple sectors at once — drivers, operators, gas stations, and commuters alike.

“Lahat nakinabang,” he said. “Sa 3 to 5 lang lahat umikot. Masaya ang tao. Lalo na’t mga negosyante, nakararating sa takdang oras ang kanilang mga empleyado.”

For the drivers themselves, the program has meant a dramatic improvement in daily take-home pay.

Under the Libreng Sakay arrangement, the city government subsidizes each participating driver’s earnings, with drivers receiving guaranteed pay of up to ₱3,500 per day — a far cry from the ₱200 to ₱500 in daily net income many had been taking home amid the ongoing global oil crisis.

The Mayor has described the arrangement as one where drivers can focus on their routes without financial anxiety.

Beyond the numbers, Domagoso framed the program’s continuation as a matter of keeping faith with both the drivers and the riding public — and signaled that the conversation it had sparked was already reaching beyond Manila.

He expressed hope that the national government and the private sector would eventually join the effort, describing the ideal outcome as a “whole-nation approach” to cushioning Filipinos from the impact of rising fuel costs. “I think we will be hearing soon from the national government,” he said.

The Mayor closed his remarks on a characteristically warm note, urging city hall employees to take pride in the work being done — and to carry that same spirit of service through the week ahead.

“Mag-iingat kayo,” he told the crowd. “Pagkakataong makapaglingkod at maging bahagi ng solusyon sa suliranin ng ating mamamayan.”