Too much on LTO’s plate?

Somebody must have made a lot of money in kickbacks getting that DoTr-LTO project rolling before it ground to a screeching halt after hitting road bumps.

The Land Transportation Office is back in the spotlight with a plot twist in the latest chapter of its License Plate Chronicles. According to news reports, the LTO had threatened to slap motorists with fines if they failed to claim their replacement green-to-white license plates within 60 days.

Motorists have been waiting for eons to get their hands on those plates, and the LTO’s response was supposedly to dangle fines over their heads. Talk about a rollercoaster of emotions, from anticipation to exasperation, in record time. It’s as if the LTO believes in taxing our patience and testing our fortitude.

Let’s break it down. The LTO seems to be pointing fingers at motorists, and what’s the crime? Not making a beeline to the LTO offices to get something they paid for years ago! It’s like paying for a pizza delivery, only to be told the pizza is still in the oven eight years later. It’s enough to make you scratch your head in disbelief.

In 2015, the LTO decided to jazz up our license plates with a new green-to-white makeover a sartorial upgrade for our trusty vehicles. It all sounded grand, except there’s a tiny hiccup the LTO’s delivery system has proven itself to be slower than a tortoise on a Sunday stroll.

As a result, the streets are filled with motorists sporting the equivalent of fashion runway placeholders old plates that have seen better days.

But here’s the kicker: The LTO seems to have forgotten a crucial detail. Who’s responsible for the delay in the first place? That’s right, none other than the LTO itself! It’s like a chef burning your dinner and then charging you extra for the fire show. The audacity is almost admirable, in a bewildering kind of way.

So, what’s the takeaway from this brouhaha? Instead of playing the blame game and pointing fingers at motorists, the LTO should focus on its real task: Delivering those long-awaited license plates. If we paid for them, we deserve them; it’s as simple as that. And how about a little apology for the trouble?

The “fines” fiasco started when LTO chief, Assistant Secretary Vigor Mendoza II, just weeks into the job, trumpeted the launch of the LTOPlateReplacement.com website, where motorists can check whether their replacement plates are already available and at which branch of the LTO they may be picked up.

During that interview, a senator’s proposal to expedite the release of the plates by penalizing those who would not get them within 60 days seemed to have gotten LTO’s attention for possible implementation. Mendoza clearly has not thought of the glaring stupidity of that lawmaker’s proposal.

As the anger mounts over the floated fines, it would serve Mendoza, the LTO and its mother agency, the Department of Transportation, to issue a categorical statement not a one-paragraph disavowal that it would not impose a cruel fine on motorists who may have lost interest in getting their new plates eight years too late.

Lest we forget, at the backdrop of this saga is none other than the DoTr, which, with the LTO, orchestrated the perplexing Motor Vehicle License Plates Standardization Program in 2015, when motorists were coerced into paying for the phantom replacement black-on-white plates.

Somebody must have made a lot of money in kickbacks getting that DoTr-LTO project rolling before it ground to a screeching halt after hitting road bumps. But perish that bad thought, as there’s the presumption of regularity in whatever government does. Yeah, right. We were not born yesterday.

For 2022, the Commission on Audit reported that over 1.7 million plates had been paid for, yet remained unstamped and undelivered. A staggering P808 million in plates have remained in the realm of the unseen as if the LTO set out on a quest but forgot to bring the map.

As CoA raised its voice and once more flagged the LTO, it echoed the sentiments of a populace that had waited far too long for their long-promised metallic emblems. But as LTO allegedly “disavowed” the fines, saying it intended to penalize its own branch officials who would not lift a finger to push the plates to their owners, we hope the curtains have been drawn shut on this act.

We, however, are left to ponder what may have been a trial balloon floated by the LTO. Was the penalty proposition a mere shadow, or a harbinger of impending chaos?  The LTO and DoTr are the architects of this tale–the 2015 payment for plates that never graced the roads, the CoA’s admonitions, the confusion, and the turmoil.

Can Mendoza step back, please, into the spotlight to, with more vigor, clarify and rectify that crazy fines pronouncement? We, the people, deserve an explanation.

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Credit belongs to : tribune.net.ph