THE Department of Transportation, Land Transportation Office (LTO) and Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) have jointly issued a draft circular that will impose penalties on motorists passing through expressways without a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag as well as those with insufficient balance.
TRB is conducting a public consultation on the draft circular on July 15 Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) No. 2024-001 mandates toll expressway users to install and secure electronic toll collection (ETC) devices such as RFID tags upon entering toll expressways.
The draft circular also ensures RFID accounts have the required minimum balance before entering and sufficient balance to pay the required toll fee before exiting the payment toll lanes of the expressway.
Non-compliance shall be subject to penalties in line with Republic Act 4136 and Joint Administrative Order No. 2014-01 and the draft circular.
The penalty for entering a limited access highway without the required valid ETC device is P1,000 and P2,000 for the first and second offense, respectively. The penalty for subsequent offenses is P5,000 per offense.
For exiting the toll expressway with insufficient account balance, the penalty for the first offense is P500; second offense, P1,000; and for subsequent offenses, P2,500 per offense.
The use of fraudulent, tampered or fake ETC device and e-card upon entry and exit on toll expressways will also be penalized. Fraudulent or falsified ETC has a penalty of P1,000, P2,000 and P5,000 for the first, second and subsequent offenses, respectively.
Motorists who commit the violation three times within 12 months may result in confiscation of the driver’s license and suspension of the car registration.
The JMC said three instances of violations within any 12 month period by the same motor vehicle or driver-violator will warrant an alarm by the LTO or confiscation of the driver-violator’s driver’s license.The LTO may suspend the certificate of registration for a period not exceeding 90 days.
The JMC covers all types of motor vehicles, whether private, for hire, diplomatic or government, while entering and traveling on all toll expressways.
