Habal Habal

"Habal" is a Bisaya term which means “the sexual (act) intercourse of animals” wherein the male animal enters the female animal by striding at the female’s back. However, in some areas in Visayas and Mindanao, the term “habal” is not only applicable to animals but to human also. In other words, “habal” literally means “sex”.

Now, “habal-habal” is the term used to call the motorcycle taxi because the driver and the passengers are in “habal” (animal) position.

Habal Habal is a single motorcycle without sidecar carrying two, three, sometimes four passengers on its pillion seat used as a form of public transportation especially in places that jeepneys or tricycles cannot reach and where roads are mostly narrow and unpaved.

This form of public transportation is already present all over the Philippines for decades and had gained its popularity in our place in the recent years. This is maybe due to a lot of motorcycle distributors who opened their business in our place and their affordable leasing programs that a lot of people were able to avail and use it to generate extra income. And that is by transforming this simple motorcycle into a Habal Habal.

Though this is illegal, a lot of passengers prefer riding these Habal Habals than the conventional tricycles and padyak/trisikad for speed and convenience.

The only sad thing is that these Habal habals are prone to accident. Just yesterday, a Habal Habal with 2 passengers collided with a delivery truck after it turned on a blind curve. The passengers were in critical condition and is needed to be transfered to Iloilo City for treatment and observation. The sad thing is that it turned out that the driver of Habal Habal has no driver's licence and the motorcycle he is driving has no registration and not covered with accident insurance.

With these kind of incidents happening frequently, the government seems cannot regulate the operations of these Habal Habal since there"s no franchising and regulation for this kind of transport, safety of passengers and drivers is really compromised.

The local LTO (Land Transportation Office) is strengthening their operations and become even stricter in implementing the No Helmet/Plate, No Drive Campaign especially for motorcycles but it is not enough monitor every municipality regularly.

On the other hand, the restriction and regulation of these Habal Habals means lesser opportunity to generate income and food for the family. In these times of job scarcity and continuos soaring of prices of prime commodities, more and more people tend to ignore their personal safety and of their passengers just to have something to put on the table. At least, they can consider this job honorable.

Rain or shine, safe or not, these Habal Habal drivers will continue on riding and thread the narrow and unpaved road towards their dreams.