Habal-habal pretending to be couple caught

MMDA catches illegal motorcycle taxi and passenger posing as partners

The Philippine government has imposed an 'enhanced community quarantine' to control the spread COVID-19 pandemic. With this, authorities have ordered that all public transport to stop operating, especially motorcycle taxis.

Citizens are being required to stay home unless they are part of the front liners such as medical staff, doctors, pharmacists, etc. Only private motorcycle riders without pillion are being allowed to ply the roads if they have a valid reason to do so.

Those certain exemptions, like buying basic necessities or going to the bank or drug store are permitted, while all other non-important matters are prohibited during the enhanced community quarantine. But, we as Filipinos are very resilient, always trying to find out if we can bend the rules.

MMDA's EDSA boss, Bong Nebrija, shared his team's encounter this morning with a couple of erring riders and their pillions amid the lockdown in place.

In one of the random checkpoints, they have flagged down a suspicious pair which were pretending to be a 'couple'. 

First, they asked why are they together and if they are a married couple to which the “couple” replied that they are in a domestic partnership. Since their IDS do not show the same address, the EDSA boss asked the couple to demonstrate their love for each other and at the same time prove that they are indeed in a relationship.

The driver of the motorcycle immediately took off his helmet and got ready to kiss his “better half” but the lady burst in anger and jumped off of the motorcycle exclaiming that the relationship was in fact, a made-up story and that the driver is a 'habal-habal' who charged her PhP150.00 to ferry her to her destination. 'Habal-habal' is an illegal motorcycle taxi service that the authorities discourage the public from using as it offers no safety or insurance whatsoever.

The EDSA boss noted, however, that “this is just close to reality of what happened today,” hinting that he might have been a little creative in his post and is just trying to have an ice breaker especially in this time of national crisis.