LONG queues, frustrated customers, and “offline” advisories posted on transaction windows have been some of the common scenes at several Land Transportation Office (LTO) sites nationwide in the past weeks due to the slowing down of its foreign-made information technology (IT) portal, Land Transportation Management System (LTMS).

The LTMS falloff was first reported in the last days of August, which caused delays in LTO’s processing of driver’s license applications and motor vehicle registration in most of the regions including the National Capital Region (NCR).

In a media interview, Makati District Office Chief Marinette Abarico said this is the “worst slowdown” that they have experienced with the LTMS to date.

Some LTO frontliners, who are at the receiving end of the customers’ ire, had no choice but to render additional working hours even on weekends to process the backlogs as a result of the slowdown, according to LTO-Davao South District Office Chief Melencio Diaz, Jr.

In a radio interview with DZRH, Diaz revealed that their employees volunteered to work without pay even on rest days and holidays just to catch up with a month’s worth of backlogs.

Various media reports showed the plight of motorists in transacting with the LTO in the past weeks. A news report by ABS-CBN’s TV Patrol revealed the story of a motorist, Likha Cuevas, who went back and forth to the LTO main office in Quezon City for a week just to register her motor vehicle. In her interview, Cuevas urged the LTO to address the root of the problem, which she said is the agency’s service provider, to ensure that this incident will not happen again. Other motorists were forced to skip work for several days just to complete their transactions with the LTO and sacrificed days’ worth of income.

Some LTO clients shared their frustrations on social media. Visor, a mobility website, on its Facebook page shared a photo of a netizen, Rsh Beato captioned “Wasting hours at LTO because they are offline.” Another Facebook user Louis Matthew Gabriel shared that he took a two-day leave from work to transact with LTO but went home with nothing. Meanwhile, student Shane Ramos said that transacting at LTO-Bataan was a “hassle for students who need to miss school and employees who need to miss a day of work” due to the intermittent connection of the LTMS. She also complained about the “extremely hot weather” in the queuing area.

LTO has already apologized to the motoring public for the troubles caused by the system glitches and denied allegations that the slowdown may be an internal sabotage within the agency.

In 2018, the LTO awarded the P3.4 billion Road IT project to Dermalog and its local partners in the Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) that aims to digitize LTO transactions.

This amount is actually considered as component A, and is aside from a component B, which itself separately costs around another P4.8 billion.

The Commission on Audit (COA) earlier revealed in its report that Dermalog received “undue payment” for the project despite submitting incomplete deliverables, which is affecting LTO transactions. Dermalog’s spokesperson, Atty. Nikki De Vega, in her radio interview with DZBB, confirmed that the foreign IT company received approximately P3 billion in payments from the government.

The LTO has already asked the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to help them solve the systems issue. Investigation is ongoing and the agency awaits the DICT’s initial assessment in the next few days.

Despite the system slowdown, the agency continues to process transactions but on a limited rate and sometimes would ask the waiting motorist customer to come back on another day.

The LTO is appealing to the public for understanding and assured that it is doing its best to find a solution to the slowdown at the soonest time possible.