expressways in the Philippines

San Miguel Corporation extends free toll passage for frontliners

Rappler.com

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San Miguel Corporation extends free toll passage for frontliners

NO TOLL FEES. San Miguel Corporation continues to waive toll fees for registered medical frontliners

Photo courtesy of San Miguel Corporation website

The company has waived a total of P156 million in toll fees as of January 18

Editor’s note: GoodRap continues to share stories of brands and companies leveraging their resources to help in the ongoing fight against the pandemic.

In line with this, San Miguel Corporation has implemented various COVID-19 response initiatives, including making travel easier for medical frontliners. Below is their story.

As we continue to fight the ongoing pandemic, many companies have been concentrating on creating initiatives to support our medical frontliners.

San Miguel Corporation (SMC) was one of the first to do so. To make travel easier for medical frontliners, the company instituted a no toll fees policy when the pandemic hit in March 2020. 

This initiative was initially available for registered medical practitioners at all SMC expressways, namely the Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR), the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX), the Skyway system, NAIA Expressway (NAIAX), and the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEX).

Last January – around 10 months after the initiative was launched – SMC President Ramon S. Ang said that aside from the above-mentioned expressways, registered frontliners will also be allowed to use SMC’s latest expressway, the newly-opened Skyway 3, for free indefinitely. 

The impact of SMC’s no toll fees policy

Since mid-June 2020, SMC has been the only toll operator still implementing a no toll fees policy for medical practitioners. 

The company also announced that around 10,400 frontliners are currently registered under this ongoing program. 

“This time of pandemic, we need to help our country, our fellow Filipinos, and each other, as much as we can. We have been providing this courtesy to our medical practitioners non-stop, because it’s our way of honoring them and thanking them for their selfless efforts to save lives and to help us survive this crisis,” Ang said in a press statement.

SMC’s COVID-19 response initiatives

The no toll fees policy is just one of the company’s COVID-19 response initiatives. 

Last year, SMC provided medical insurance worth P2 million each to 5,000 medical workers in Cebu.

The company did not stop at helping medical frontliners. It also revived the vitamin-fortified, energy-packed bread “nutribun” last March 2020 to help poor communities during the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ). A few months later, SMC gave away nutribuns for free daily to the urban poor through its network of Petron gas stations.

The company also recently announced that it will be spending close to a billion pesos to vaccinate all its 70,000 employees and extended workforce for free.

SMC aims to create a safe and healthy workplace and help contribute to the country’s economic recovery – which are all rooted in the company’s core value of malasakit. – Rappler.com

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