MANILA – President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. lauded the Land Transportation Office (LTO) for close to achieving a zero backlog on car plates and driver’s licenses.
In a sectoral meeting with the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the LTO officials in Malacañang, the Chief Executive said LTO’s programs have improved from the previous year in terms of license plate issuance.
“We have finally paid attention to the problem. So, I’m glad to see that the motor vehicles – ‘yung four-wheeled vehicles were okay,” Marcos said, referring to the zero backlog of license plates for motor vehicles.
LTO chief Vigor Mendoza, for his part, told President Marcos that the issue on the backlog for the current demand of license plates has been taken care off except for its distribution.
Mendoza added that, in terms of license cards, the supply has now gone back to normal after the injunction order issued by a regional trial court that stopped the delivery of 5.2 million cards has been lifted.
“We have the remaining cards. Out of the 3.6 million delivered, we have still on hand 1.6 million. So, the supply of the cards is continuing right now and we continue to deliver it downstairs to our district offices,” Mendoza said.
The LTO official said the remaining balance from the 5.2 million is not enough to cover the entire 4.01 million backlog.
“But, this prompted us to bid out the remaining 6.5 million supply cards for this year on an agency-to-agency contract with the APO Production Unit, which agreed to begin delivering the cards on June 3,” Mendoza said.
The resumption of the issuance of plastic driver’s licenses came after the Court of Appeals (CA) lifted the injunction order which prevented the agency from receiving plastic cards.
In October, 2023, the LTO said it was producing one million license plates per month amid its backlog of 80,000 plates at the time. Based on LTO’s estimate, the demand for motor vehicle plates was around 2,000 vehicles a day./PN
