The biggest bus company on Negros Island , Ceres Liner, is not joining the two-day transportation strike set Thursday and Friday, Rainer Ferales, a manager of the firm, said yesterday.

We will continue to serve the public and will ask Senior Supt. Rosendo Franco, Negros Occidental police director, to ensure that we are allowed to ply the roads.

But Jessie Ortega, United Negros Drivers Operators Center secretary general, said Ceres in the past also did not join transport strike but they succeeded in paralyzing public transportation.

UNDOC and the Federation of Bacolod City Drivers Association president Elizabeth Katalbas on Monday announced that their groups will be staging a transportation strike on Thursday and Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to protest the rising prices of fuel.

Ortega yesterday said they remained confident they will be able to paralyze public transportation in Negros Occidental to dramatize their demands.

Negros Occidental Gov. Joseph Marañon said he sympathizes with the cause of those participating in the transportation strike.

But he said the provincial government will provide transportation to enable Capitol employees to get to work.

We are urging the Capitol employees to try their best to come to work during the transportation strike, and if they fail to do so they will have to explain to their department heads, he said.

The oil companies should also cooperate and help keep fuel prices down, they make huge profits, he said.

Meanwhile, the Dr. Milagros Gonzales, Bacolod Schools Superintendent, said the DepEd will not cancel classes because of the transportation strike.

But she said they cannot force teachers and pupils to come to school if they have no means of transportation, she said.

Private schools yesterday had yet to announce whether they would cancel classes.

The transport strike is expected to affect classes and various activities set in Bacolod City .

Rose Vasquez, a breast cancer survivor, yesterday said more than 200 indigent breast cancer patients from all over Negros Occidental were scheduled to come to Bacolod for a Kadughan Christmas party at the Reodica Hall of the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital on Thursday.

With the transportation strike she was worried that the women would have difficulty getting to the Kadughan affair that they had been looking forward to, Vasquez said.

Kadughan is a breast cancer support group for indigent women.

Vasquez said they would have to decide whether to reset the affair.*CPG

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