SWS: 72% of Filipinos struggle to commute to work
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 7) — A big majority of Filipinos said they have difficulty commuting to their workplace compared to pre-pandemic times.
The Social Weather Stations said Friday its survey in November showed 72% of working people expressed difficulty in traveling to their place of work because of limited public transportation.
The survey stated 42% of non-home-based workers found commuting to be "very much harder now," 19% said "somewhat much harder" and 11% said "slightly harder now." Twenty eight percent said the experience was the same.
Among respondents, 44% said they volunteered to walk to work. The others take a motorcycle (24%), tricycle (14%), jeepney or multi-cab (8%), bicycle (5%), bus (3%), private car (3%) and motorboat or banca (1%).
Walking to work is most common outside Metro Manila, the survey said, with 58% of workers walking to work in Mindanao, 44% in the Visayas, and 39% in Balance Luzon. In Metro Manila, the top mode of commuting is jeepney or multi-cab, comprising 25% of the sample, followed by walking at 21%.
The number of home-based workers is highest in the capital region at 29%, followed by Balance Luzon (22%), Mindanao (13%), and the Visayas (10%), the survey found.
The survey was conducted on Nov. 21 to 25, 2020, using face-to-face interviews of 1,500 adults. The sampling error margins are ±2.5% for national percentages.
