THE Land Transportation Office (LTO) admitted that the shortage in the issuance of plastic driver’s licenses remains a problem with the numbers in hand slowly running out.

LTO chief Atty. Vigor Mendoza in a press conference yesterday, said that the agency now has 270,000 remaining stocks which is estimated to only last for half a month based on the normal monthly demand of 550,000 cards.

This far, Mendoza said they are banking on two options which are the lifting of the temporary restraining order (TRO) on the delivery of the 5.2 million plastic cards; and the government’s agency-to-agency procurement.

It can be recalled that the Quezon City Regional Trial Court in August last year, issued a TRO against the LTO that effectively halted the awarding of the contract to the winning bidder.

As a result, the agency is addressing the 2.6 million cards backlog.

Mendoza said that if the 550,000 monthly consumption were to be based, then the LTO needs to process around six million cards on top of the 2.6 million backlog.

And while waiting and hoping for the lifting of the TRO, the LTO chief said they have considered tapping and inviting government printing offices (National Printing Office, APO, among others) to submit quotations as an alternative mode of procurement to produce the needed 6 million licenses to include the backlog.

Producing or manufacturing such, requires a tedious process involving other agencies to make sure the license card is tamper-proof.

Mendoza cited the technical tests for the quality of the license card as well as security codes were just an example to which the Department of Science and Technology has to be consulted.

AUTHOR PROFILE

Joel dela Torre