Pimentel wants former Angkas owner to be declared persona non grata

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III has filed a resolution seeking to declare Singaporean national Angeline Ximen Tham, who used to own 99.996% of Angkas, persona non grata for her alleged high-handed, arrogant, and irresponsible acts.

In Resolution 287, Pimentel said Tham committed blatant transgressions of Philippine laws, misled, and bullied Philippine government officials.

“Tham is merely a guest of our country, yet she is already acting like an oligarch which she seems hell-bent on becoming at our expense. Her acts of deriding our sovereign laws is high-handed, arrogant and irresponsible, which should not be countenanced but condemned to the fullest,” Pimentel said.

The senator said reports have it that Tham owned P9.8 million in subscribed shares of Angkas at its inception, as recorded in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and appears as the president of the company in its official documents.

He said Angkas, as early as 2016, embarked on the business of motorcycle taxis even without a Certificate of Public Convenience and despite knowing that motorcycles cannot be utilized as common carriers under an existing Philippine law.

The senator said the company made it appear in its Articles of Incorporation filed with the SEC that it will not operate as a public utility “thereby misleading the appropriate government offices although in truth and in fact, it has control of the selection of its drivers, the power of dismissal, and the power to control the conduct of the drivers, thereby passing the “test” for establishing employer-employee relationship.”

Pimentel further said that when government agencies implemented the law and apprehended the drivers of Angkas, the company initiated the staging of a mass “indignation” ride by its drivers which was meant to paralyze traffic in Metro Manila and embarked on a social media campaign “designed to shame and bully government agencies who merely implemented the law.”

He said the House of Representatives on January 29, 2019, adopted House Resolution No. 2449 urging the Department of Transportation to set up a pilot program allowing and monitoring the operation of motorcycle taxis.

Pimentel said Angkas was the solitary participant in the pilot program from June 26 to December 26, 2019.

“It claims to have built up a motorcycle rider base totaling to 27,000, yet can only show that 2,204 of them are properly registered under the pilot testing program of the DOTr-Technical Working Group,” he said.

The senator said when the DOTr decided to extend the Pilot Implementation of Motorcycle Taxis under a Technical Working Group and allowed other motorcycle hailing apps to participate, Angkas vehemently protested the inclusion of other platforms and initiated another mass indignation ride by its drivers.

Pimentel said Angkas mounted another social media campaign aimed at shaming government agencies by allegedly providing false and misleading information that 17,000 riders will lose their jobs, thus affecting their families.

“Angkas riders, with the tacit approval of Angeline Xiwen Tham, have threatened to merely continue with their illegal acts, and remain colorum motorcycle taxis, if the alleged plan to displace 17,000 riders would be pursued by government,” he said.

He added that in a press conference held on December 23, 2019, Angkas representatives even went as far as falsely accusing the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board and TWG of corruption. 

He further claimed that in the January 3, 2020 press conference arranged by Geiser-Maclang, a public relations agency of Angkas, the Lawyers for Commuters Safety and Protection (LCSP) accused the LTFRB and other officials, including Pimentel, of anomalies in the selection of other players to be allowed to participate in the extension of the pilot implementation.

“Everything that was said in that press conference echoed the same statements made by Angkas,” the senator said.

The LCSP criticized Pimentel for endorsing JoyRide to the DOTR to be included in the pilot study on motorcycle taxis.

The senator admitted that his office had endorsed JoyRide’s letter to the DOTr, but the Transportation department did not accommodate them during the first pilot period.

In January, Angkas chief transport advocate George Royeca said they have already rectified the foreign ownership issue of their operator DBDOYC Inc.

He said he now owns 60% of the company and the remaining 40% is held by five individuals, including Tham.

The company had an authorized capital stock of P9.820 million, divided into 980,280 shares with par value of P100 apiece.

Tham, president of DBDOYC, has subscribed to majority or 98,204 of the shares, leaving only four shares left — one each for David Braian Medrana, Andrea Gutierrez-Besid, Marian Geronimo, and Melvin Villa. — BAP, GMA News