The Land Transportation Office (LTO) yesterday vowed to eliminate the backlog on drivers’ licenses by July, on vehicle plates by the end of the year and on license plates of motorcycles by June next year.
This developed as the LTO issued a show-cause order to around 100 car dealers for alleged failure to release the vehicle plates of new units they have sold.
“We have to be very strict with the dealers… some of our plates are stuck with the dealers and not distributed to the motorists,” said LTO chief Vigor Mendoza in a briefing after the sectoral meeting in Malacanang.
Mendoza said the LTO is committed to release the vehicle license plates, the official receipt and certificate of registration (ORCR), and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) cards for new vehicles to the vehicle dealers within a five-day period.
The dealers are then given six days to release the plates, ORCR and RFID to their customers or new vehicle owners.
Mendoza said the LTO can close down the vehicle dealers which fail to comply with the 11-day release period — five days from LTO and six days from the dealers — for the plates, ORCR and RFID for new vehicles.
He said the LTO will launch a hotline number to allow vehicle owners to report erring traders.
Yesterday, the LTO reported to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. the status of the agency’s efforts in addressing the backlog in drivers’ licenses and vehicle plates.
Mendoza said LTO personnel have been ordered to fast track efforts to achieve zero backlog earlier than June next year.
Mendoza said LTO is facing an 11.4-million backlog on vehicle plates of motorcycles which had started to pile up starting 2014 due to budgetary constraints.
“We are now catching up…We have a program on how to move this forward. By the end of 2024, we would have addressed more or less 50 percent of the backlog. By June 2025, we would have finished the backlog as far as motorcycles are concerned,” he said.
He said aside from the new plates, LTO would also be able to issue the replacement plates for 2.3 million motorcycles.
Mendoza said LTO now has eight manual machines and two robotic machines that can produce 48,000 plates per day, or almost two times higher than the previous daily production of around 28,000 plates.
He said the LTO expects to address the backlog on new plates for four-wheel vehicles by July this year and some 1.5 million requested replacement plates by the end of this year.
Mendoza said the LTO also expects to eliminate the backlog on driver’s licenses by July this year.
He said production of 9.7 million plastic driver’s license cards had been auctioned off, so “we have sufficient driver’s license cards to support the demand for until the end of the year.”
He added with the lifting of an injunction order issued by a regional trial court that had prevented the delivery of 5.2 million cards, the licenses are now being delivered and distributed.
Mendoza said 3.6 million of these cards have been delivered as of April 30.
He said those with driver’s license cards that expired last April 30 and last year, as well as those that expired May 1 to May 30 and the last quarter of 2023 are now encouraged to go to LTO for the release of their plastic cards.
He said LTO is also looking into the adoption of a delivery system for driver’s license to speed up the distribution.
