Crisis Looming at LTO?
The Land Transportation Office seems to be a fount for controversy that
almost always gets the courts involved.
And always this precipitates a crisis hampering the agency's public service
functions.
Witness the license plate backlog, the paper licenses, etc.
Another controversy that has reached the courts concerns LTO's contract
with IT supplier Dermalog.
A petition has been filed before the Supreme Court seeking to scrap the
joint venture agreement between LTO and Dermalog establishing the Land
Transportation Management System.
Petitioners Atty. Carlito Montenegro and jeepney operator Gerald Domingo
claimed the IT deal was flawed at inception and its implementation
threatened national security.
The petition has raised fears, expressed more recently by road safety
advocate Martin Nico de los Angeles, that scrapping the deal would force
the LTO to return to manual processing of transactions.
In a statement, Delos Angeles painted a scenario of long waits and delays
in the processing and issuances of driver's licenses, vehicle
registrations, and other functions with the shutdown of the LTMS which
links the LTO IT network with motor vehicle dealers, medical clinics,
driving schools, as well as, hundreds of private motor vehicle inspection
centers, and insurance companies.
"No validation or verification can happen even in a manual system since all
data is stored in LTMS," he said, adding that without any IT system in
place or at worse to try to reinstate a clearly vulnerable one, LTO can't
process any transactions.
Allaying such fears, LTO officials and employees calling themselves the
Transportation District Officers Association of the Philippines issued a
statement, saying: "Even if there's an LTMS shutdown, we are confident that
our operations will continue with the use of parallel systems, like what we
already did in the past."
The group added that they are ready and willing to extend office hours to
fully utilize alternative solutions to mitigate the possible delays if the
LTMS is shutdown.
However, the use of parallel systems by LTO to mitigate the alleged failure
of Dermalog to fulfill contractual obligations and commitments under the
joint venture agreement has prompted the filing of cases of corruption
before the Ombudsman against LTO chief Vigor Mendoza II by the Federated
Land Transport Organizations of the Philippines.
More recently the so-called Coalition of Good Governance aired an appeal to
President Bongbong Marcos to sack Mendoza for alleged corruption and
betrayal of public trust over his and the agency's actions with regard to
the LTMS and Dermalog.
The group said that while LTO's new LTMS was being implemented in most
places, their old LTO-IT system was still being used by some LTO offices
and was charging customers 169.09 pesos as "computer fee."
Mendoza denied allegations of corruption saying the LTO successfully
consolidated all the online transactions using the LTMS, which means the
transactions now are more convenient and hassle-free.
He added that the cases before the Ombudsman would give him the opportunity
and proper forum to prove the allegations were totally baseless and absurd
and to expose the real motive behind such actions.
Again, the Transportation District Officers Association of the Philippines
came out in defense of Mendoza and the LTO.
In press statements, the group said the LTO was forced to use the parallel
IT systems since the LTMS has proven to be inadequate in the agency's day
to day operations.
The way things are going, motorists should brace for more disruptions of
services at the LTO.