Filipinos who walk in the street or cross the road illegally will no longer get a slap on the wrist. Instead, they risk a smack with a wet blanket.
“We’ve tried talking to pedestrians, asking them to walk on the sidewalks, but it wasn’t effective,” said Richard Apodarado, a traffic enforcement commander in Manila, the congested capital of 12 million people and seemingly as many vehicles.
Under the new campaign, about 20 trucks patrol the city with wooden poles attached to damp blankets emblazoned with the warning: “No walking or standing in the streets.” People who don’t step back onto the curb are in for a rude shock.
In the past, offenders who blocked the road while waiting for public transport were fined, jailed, told to do community service or made to sing the national anthem in public.
“We lack respect for the government and government does not have moral authority like it does in other Asian nations,” said Arni Trinidad, a sociology professor at the University of the Philippines. “I think government has to engage in Machiavellian ways.”
But not everyone is happy with how the soggy clampdown is being carried out.
“It seems that they don’t know what they’re doing,” said street vendor Bobot Flores. “They do not treat us like humans.”