VI. Special Commercial Laws

Statutory Restrictions on the Operation and Maintenance of Government Vehicles

The restriction in the historical statutory appropriation provisions applied to the use, operation, or maintenance of government service cars, jeeps, station wagons, vans, service trucks, pick-up trucks, launches, speedboats, or motorcycles from authorized appropriations, except for specific expressly enumerated offices and functions. Whether an agency may operate a vehicle today must be determined under the applicable General Appropriations Act and government-vehicle regulations.

The entities and functions named in those historical provisions included:

• Legislative and Executive General Services: The House of Representatives, the Senate, and Malacañang (or the Malacañan Household) are expressly authorized to operate vehicles for general service purposes.
• National Intelligence: The National Intelligence Coordinating Agency is authorized to use vehicles in the coordination of national intelligence activities and in carrying out its functions in the interest of national security.
• Broadcasting Operations: The Radio Station DZFM is authorized to operate vehicles for covering special events for delayed broadcasts, servicing sponsored programs, contacting artists, fetching sign-on personnel, and bringing home personnel signing off.
• Social Welfare and Relief: The historical provision named the Social Welfare Administration as authorized to utilize vehicles for ministering relief during military actions against dissidents to evacuees, the injured, the incapacitated, and victims of natural calamities such as typhoons, earthquakes, fires, floods, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions. It further authorized that former agency to transport inmates of Welfareville to and from courts, hospitals, and other offices, procure food supplies and materials for subsistence, deliver food within the compound, and collect and dispose of garbage.