The Commission on Audit (COA) has just released its 2020 annual audit report on the Department of Transportation (DOTr), which provides a bigger glimpse of the Land Transportation Office’s (LTO) license-plate backlog.
According to the COA’s report, more than P2 billion worth of license plates were undelivered from 2014 to 2020. This lot comprises 8.1 million motorcycle (MC) license plates and 2.6 million pairs of replacement motor vehicle (MV) license plates.
We reached out to DOTr assistant secretary Goddes Libiran for a statement, and we were told that the LTO is still preparing one as of this writing. In the meantime, Libiran provided us with some figures as clarification.
“Please note lang that the plate backlog stemmed from a contract signed in 2013, where the then DOTC entered into a contract with the PPI-JKG to produce 5,236,439 pairs of motor vehicle plates and 9,968,017 pieces of motorcycle plates, costing P1.989 billion and P1.196 billion, respectively, under the LTO’s Motor Vehicle License Plate Standardization Program (2014-2017). This was subjected to a Notice of Disallowance and Supreme Court TRO which was only lifted in late 2018,” Libiran said.
“Hindi ang LTO ngayon ang gumawa ng problema. In fact, sila ang gumagawa ng solusyon para mahabol lahat ng backlog since the TRO and the Disallowance were lifted in 2018,” added Libiran.
She noted that the DOTr hopes to release the official statement within the day. This statement will also include figures on how many plates the LTO has produced and distributed since its plate-making facility was established in 2018.
We’ll bring you more details as soon as the LTO’s statement is out, so check back here for more updates.
source: Top Gear Philippines
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