The perennially notorious LTO
I’ve long described the Land Transportation Office as an agency that has made an art out of dreaming up creative new hurdles to throw in people’s way. I’ve lost count of the articles I’ve written in this column over the past 23 years on my own direct experiences or observations of the LTO’s uncanny talent for inflicting needless difficulties on its clients, whether driver’s license applicants or vehicle registrants. For a major part of the general public, the annual ordeal of dealing with this agency goes back decades before that—in my case, to the early 70s when I got my first driver’s license. I did have good things to say, too, on certain improvements in at least two of those past articles I wrote on this perennially notorious agency, but these were somehow still negated by persistent issues that never seemed to go away.
Media personality James Deakin’s viral commentary on how his attempt to teach good citizenship to his son backfired, following the latter’s holiday traffic offense, has again called wide attention to the LTO’s persistent shortcomings as a frontline public service agency. He was fortunate to receive replies from concerned authorities (which my dozens of articles never managed to get). The respective public responses of the LTO chief and his boss, the transportation secretary himself, were an amusing study in contrast. The lower official took the classic counterattack defense mode (never mind irrelevance), true to his agency’s traditional dysfunctional culture; fortunately, his superior chose the magnanimous listen and take the corrective action mode, which we Filipinos deserve much more of.
Those of us who go through the annual ordeal at the LTO know only too well what I allude to. In 2002, I noted a wide scope for improving the LTO’s frontline services by simply changing the physical workflow setup in their offices. In 2005, I wrote of their seemingly blind eye to (even possible connivance with) fly-by-night firms issuing spurious insurance coverage needed for motor vehicle registration. In 2006, I cited overpriced and sham medical exams and drug tests for driver’s license applications and renewals. In 2007, it was the LTO’s misguided plan to have only one exclusive government insurer provide the required insurance coverage to all motorists nationwide. In 2010, I wrote of loose enforcement of emission tests and standards on motor vehicles for registration, and lax administration of drivers’ tests in the license application process. In 2013, I shared readers’ rants on their LTO travails, including how it took someone three days of daily trips to an LTO office before he finally obtained his prized driver’s license.
In 2017, I narrated how my own “medical test” in the sole accredited “clinic” in the vicinity of an LTO license renewal center in a shopping mall went–when I was charged P350 just to read a line of four letters on the wall. That was it. There was no measurement of height and weight (which were simply copied from my previous license), no blood pressure test, not even a cursory look by a physician; there was none. I spent all of three minutes in the “clinic,” and the longer part of that time was spent preparing my unsigned receipt. A motoring magazine described those tests as “the most legal scam in the country today,” and it sure felt like it.
The LTO has had a long history of bright ideas to make its processes more cumbersome. Many will remember the old early warning devices, or EWDs, triangular reflectors that were required on every vehicle for registration or registration renewal. Further back, they had everyone buy two pairs of reflectorized tape to stick on their vehicle bumpers—yellow for the front, red for the rear—also as a registration requirement. Not a few suspected that LTO personalities themselves were involved in these businesses that the government gifted with a captive market, not to mention those clerks who’d sell you overpriced plastic jackets as you claimed your card.
In 2018, I wrote of my then three years of waiting for the new “tamper-proof” license plates we were all made to pay for in 2015, when the LTO decided to require the new plates for all, and not just for first-time vehicle registrants. To this date, nearly 11 years hence, I’m still waiting for my plates. For 10 years, I kept being told that they remained unavailable. Last July, the ltotracker.com website finally said that they were ready, and I could request delivery after paying the shipping fee to the designated third-party logistics company. Relieved and excited, I promptly did, and got a tracking number from the carrier. To this date, a full six months later, the tracking number still yields the message “Your package is still with LTO. We’ll process it as soon as they hand it over to us.” You would understand why I’m all but ready to give up hope that they’ll ever get their act together.
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cielito.habito@gmail.com
