LTO: Driver‘s license cards backlog at over 200,000 as of May 2

The Land Transportation Office (LTO)’s backlog in driver’s license cards is at 234,149 as of May 2, LTO chief and Transportation Department Assistant Secretary Jose Arturo Tugade said Thursday.

Tugade made the announcement during the motu proprio inquiry into the shortage of plastic ID cards for driver’s licenses issued by the LTO which recently got flak for printing driver’s licenses into papers due to the said shortage.

Of the 234,149 yet to be issued driver’s license cards, the highest number of backlog was recorded in Region 4A with 47,125, followed by Region 3 with 38,728.

The following LTO offices in various areas recorded the following backlogs:

• 32,400 in Region 7
• 18,695 in Region 12
• 15,777 in Region 11
• 11,420 in Region 10
• 11,414 in Region 6
• 10, 511 in Region 9
• 9,565 in Region 8
• 9,177 in Region 2
• 8,789 in Caraga Region
• 7,983 in Region 1
• 6,970 in Region 5
• 5,716 in Cordillera Administrative Region
• 4,236 in National Capital Region-West and
• 1,359 in National Capital Region East

Given the situation, the LTO has vowed to increase the number of driver’s license cards to be procured in the succeeding years specifically by:

• having a one-year buffer based on yearly-projected number of transactions
• securing a multi-year contracting authority which may possibly need the President’s approval and
• separating the schedule of delivery of cards for the current year and the succeeding year.

In addition, the LTO said they will secure source codes of the Land Transportation Management System from Dermalog (supplier of driver’s license cards) for the LTO ton have full control over the system on top of implementing a Digital License program in partnership with the Department of Information Technology Communications (DICT).

Transportation Undersecretary Kim de Leon, for his part, said the bidding for the additional driver’s license cards will start on May 24.

“The submission of the bidding [documents] for 5.2 million driver’s license cards is on May 24,” De Leon said.

“There are seven entities who made queries [on the project],” De Leon added when asked how many firms are expected to make a bid for the project.

The seven firms who made queries included previous supplier Dermalog.

De Leon said the budget for the contract is at P240 million. — RSJ, GMA Integrated News