Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime J. Bautista has found a shortcut addressing the multimillion backlog in driver’s license woes and put an end to a saga occasioned by an ongoing court injunction.
The workaround was announced Tuesday by Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief Vigor Mendoza II before members of Tuesday Club meeting at breakfast at the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel in Mandaluyong, saying Congress has set aside an extra P100 million for the purchase of 2 million more plastic cards on top of the budget for 4.6 million such cards under the proposed DOTr budget for 2024.
“Congress has allotted additional funding for the program because we anticipate running out of cards by 2024,” Mendoza, also assistant secretary at the DOTr, said.
The workaround relates to the acceleration in procuring 4.6 million plastic cards so that by the time the legislators pass next year’s budget program, the injunction will have lapsed and the LTO gains the momentum and catch up with its two-month long backlog.
Mendoza calculated the LTO can begin addressing the backlog in January when 4.6 million plastic cards are unencumbered and at their disposal and draw on the estimated 3.2 million plastic cards towards the tail end of 2024.
“But if this is still short, Congress has added a budget of P100 million for another 2 million plastic cards,” Mendoza said.
On top of eliminating the agency’s plastics and money woes, Secretary Bautista has short circuited the procurement process by directly negotiating with the National Printing Office (NPO) and even with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for the printing of driver’s licenses next year, Mendoza also said.
“Secretary Jaime Bautista has resorted to a government-to-government arrangement so that the backlog in driver’s license may be over around May next year,” he calculated.
Printing driver’s license cards exact a heavy toll on government equipment given that some 7.2 million such cards have to be processed each year.
The load is such that even the agency’s two robot embossing machines breakdown every so often and parts replacement takes too long to procure because it turns out the equipment made in Germany is no longer top of line as the technology has since evolved, Mendoza explained.
The laser-equipped robots also cost P80 million apiece, far more expensive than 400 embossing machines the LTO uses extensively to print driver’s license cards at present, he added.
According to Mendoza, the LTO plans the purchase of 80 more embossing machines over the next five years to help it narrow the backlog quickly.
These machines cost only P3 million each, he said.
