Perennial transport woes
Why is the LTO (Land Transportation Office), the agency supposed to promote ease of land transport, often the one that ties up traffic with its seemingly arbitrary checkpoints along the highway?” fumed my nephew Nestor Ilagan late last week. We were in his car traveling west along the Butuan-Cagayan de Oro-Iligan Road in the municipality of Opol when the smoothly flowing traffic suddenly clogged up to a near standstill. Nestor, a business leader in Iligan City, and his wife Sylvia had met up with me as I spoke at a forum in Cagayan de Oro. They wanted to show me the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in El Salvador on our way to the Laguindingan Airport, since I had a couple of hours to spare before my flight back to Manila.
They knew right away what was wrong, seeing the telltale sign that there was an LTO checkpoint up ahead: many trucks had stopped and were temporarily parked on the road shoulder. Their drivers, Nestor explained, knew they were likely to get a traffic citation from the LTO agents at the checkpoint, for one excuse or another. So they would rather stop, park, and wait it out until the checkpoint was lifted, predictably at noon when the LTO agents would get hungry and break for lunch, and that lunch would most likely be financed with illicit proceeds from the random checkpoint. (Someone joked before that those checkpoints are a misnomer because they never accept checks, only cash.) Meanwhile, a huge traffic backup builds, as the flow is stopped not only by vehicles halted to be inspected and checked for documents, but also by the long line of temporarily parked trucks encroaching on the road space.
The story doesn’t end there, Nestor told me. When the driver claims his license at the LTO, he will invariably be hit with a fine so high that he will be forced into negotiating for a much lower payment with only a fraction officially receipted, and we all know where that will go. Being a businessman and ranking Iligan City Chamber of Commerce officer, Nestor spoke from firsthand observation and experience when he affirmed that this happens all over Mindanao, and those LTO-induced random traffic jams are an everyday reality.
We decided to pull aside at the seaside Panagatan Seafood Restaurant for lunch, and to wait out the traffic jam. We asked the security guard why traffic was so bad, and he confirmed that there was an LTO checkpoint ahead. Sure enough, we saw traffic speed up again, and the parked trucks disappear, right after noon came.
Over the years, the LTO had become a frequent topic for me here, having written numerous times about it, with all but two of them negative and critical of their misdeeds. I’ve written over and over on the ordeal of renewing a driver’s license, especially the painful joke (and lucrative racket) that the so-called medical exam required with every renewal is. In my “medical exam” the last time I renewed my license three years ago, the “clinic” aide simply made me read off letters from her computer screen from my seat in front of her desk. She took my weight on a battered, cheap bathroom scale, and my height with a makeshift wall ruler. But what topped it all was how she filled in my blood pressure on the form by simply asking me what it was the last time I had it taken (not even bothering to ask how long ago). The “doctora” was at her desk at the far end of the room, concealed behind a divider, and engaged me in brief small talk from a distance without even bothering to approach me or show me her face. And that was my P350 medical exam.
I haven’t asked anyone who has renewed their license lately, but I can only hope that the LTO has finally eliminated what a motoring magazine once called “the most legal scam in the country today.” Fortunately, and to the LTO’s credit, it is now a once-in-10-years experience. But motor vehicle registration is still an annual ritual, although the LTO has also recently made it possible (finally!) to do vehicle registration renewals online. I have yet to try it, but I’m counting on my next renewal being painless and quick (fingers crossed!).
And then there was the saga of the new car license plates we all had to pay for back in 2015. I wrote about how I still didn’t have them for my car three years later, and then again eight years later. When I registered my car last month, I was told they still weren’t ready—after 10 years! As I began writing this article, I thought of checking online (Yes, we can!), and lo and behold, my plates are finally ready (Halleluiah!). But there’s a catch. For some strange reason, the plates must be picked up at the LTO branch in Alaminos, Laguna—nowhere near the LTO branch where the car is registered—and unlike those for another family member whose plates were traced to Manila, there’s no option for delivery to me.
LTO, oh, LTO—will you ever get everything right?
