Valenzuela City Mayor Rex Gatchalian stood firm on his decision to suspend the business permit of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX) Corporation until the tollway operator solves problems related to the cashless transaction scheme in the city.

On Monday, December 7, Gatchalian halted NLEX Corporation’s operations in Valenzuela, leading to the lifting of barriers in 7 toll plazas and the temporary suspension of payment collections.

NLEX Corporation said in a statement sent to the media on Tuesday, December 8, that it will “continue to pursue a series of consultations and dialogues with the Valenzuela Mayor in good faith.”

According to Gatchalian, NLEX Corporation had submitted a list of promises to the Valenzuela City government to solve the heavy traffic and address the technical problems in the RFID system.

“The LGU (local government unit) will be more than happy to meet NLEX under the assumption that no suspension lifting will take place until timetables are laid out, milestones in the timetable are completed, and that we can measure these with accepted indexes,” Gatchalian told Rappler.

Image from Valenzuela City Mayor Rex Gatchalian

“We agreed to sit down the soonest so that they can lay down the action plans with concrete timelines. For me, beyond the deadlines, we must also set firm success indexes that can be verified such as [the] ‘readability’ rate of their sensors vis-à-vis the stickers,” he added.

Gatchalian said that he wants a more concrete action plan and assumed that details, which were not laid out in NLEX Corporation’s letter, will be threshed out during their meeting.

“I was wishing for a more comprehensive detailed plan than a broad stroke motherhood statement outline,” he said.

MPTC senior vice president for communications Romulo Quimbo Jr said in a CNN Philippines interview on Tuesday that toll payments will still be collected for those entering or exiting the NLEX system in areas outside of Valenzuela City.

“Technically, [toll payments] shouldn’t be a problem. It’s obviously an issue we have to tackle separately,” Quimbo said in a mix of English and Filipino.

The full shift to cashless transactions in expressways on December 1 had caused traffic gridlocks in areas near tollways, as the stickering process and technical glitches lengthen queuing time.

The RFID stickering scheme was strictly implemented starting August. The deadline was first set in November but was later extended to December. The final deadline was set eventually to January 11, 2021. – Rappler.com