Lawyer Romando Artes, acting chairman of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), has ordered the extension of duty hours of the agency's Traffic Discipline Office personnel in anticipation of a huge volume of vehicles in the National Capital Region for the Christmas season.

Artes said some of their personnel will be on duty until 12 midnight in order to ease the expected traffic congestions in major thoroughfares and other roads near the malls in Metro Manila.

"This is part of measures after owners and operators of malls in Metro Manila have agreed to adjust mall operations this Christmas season," said Artes.

The MMDA earlier sat down with mall managers to ask them to adjust mall operations from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. from Nov. 14 to Jan. 6 next year and to refrain from holding mall sales during weekdays.

The mall managers and operators agreed to the requests, including the proposal to make the deliveries from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. only. Exempted from the regulation are deliveries of perishable goods, restaurants serving breakfast, and groceries.

“Our primary duty and priority is to manage traffic first before apprehending erring motorists. We don’t allow the practice of waiting for motorists to violate traffic rules before flagging them down," said Artes.

“However, to avoid impeded traffic flow, minor violations like swerving could be exempted on a case-to-case basis except for distracted driving and number coding,” he added.

Artes said his order for extended duty hours include an instruction for traffic enforcers to refrain from unnecessary use of cellular phones while on duty.

Activities of field personnel will also be monitored through the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras located at the MMDA Operations Monitoring and Control Center (Metrobase) to make sure that the policy and guidelines among their ranks shall be strictly implemented.