The Land Transportation Office is being besieged by public complaints over its foreign-sourced information technology portal —- the Land Transportation Management System —- being blamed for recent delays in the processing of driver's licenses and motor vehicle registrations.
The LTMS has been the subject of irate comments by people, including on social media, over long system queues and "offline advisories," especially for LTO offices within Metro Manila.
LTO Makati District Office chief Marinette Abarico revealed in an interview that this has been the "worst slowdown" they have experienced with the LTMS to date.
At the receiving end of customers' ire, many LTO personnel had been forced extra hours to address the backlog on licenses and motor vehicle processing blamed on the LTMS, LTO Davao South District Office chief Melencio Diaz Jr. said.
In a radio interview, Diaz said LTO workers under him have been working without extra pay.
Since the pandemic, the LTO has been regularly extending the validity of driver's licenses and MV registrations on account of its failure to process all applicants with expiring documents.
Social media are full of horror stories of motorists going back to LTO offices for their transactions.
The LTMS is a P3.4 billion project awarded to Dermalog and its local partners in 2018 under a joint venture agreement to digitize LTO transactions. The project also entailed payment of another P4.8 billion to the JVA partners.
No less than the Commission on Appointment flagged Dermalog for receiving "undue payment" for the project despite its alleged failure to meet its deliverables to the LTO.
Dermalog's spokesperson Nikki de Vega has confirmed that the foreign IT company has already received P3 billion as payment from the government.
The LTO has already sought assistance from the Department of Information and Communications Technology to investigate the problems with LTMS.
