The leaders of Federated Land Transport Organizations of the Philippines, or FELTOP, urged the Department of Transportation, or DoTr, to enforce full utilization of the new Land Transportation Management System, or LTMS, instead of the old system to immediately block suspicious car registrations.

The group said on Tuesday that the continued use of the old Land Transportation Office, or LTO, system facilitated the registration and issuance of license plates to two allegedly smuggled Bugatti Chiron sports cars.

FELTOP spokesperson Jun Rustico Braga said that, unlike the LTMS, the old LTO system might not have enough capacity to detect and block suspicious registration.

“The registration of smuggled vehicles should easily be prevented by now because we now have computerized databases and systems. But the LTO is persisting in using the old LTO IT system which allows the registration even of smuggled luxury vehicles that entered the country without paying corresponding import duties,” Braga said.

He added that the registration of these smuggled vehicles and the issuance of registration papers and license plates by the LTO was unfair to Filipinos who diligently paid their taxes.

To recall, it was also FELTOP who pointed out that the former LTO-IT system of reintroducing a P169 computer fee for motorists processing transactions with the LTO, which was already removed by the LTMS.

The computer fee was eliminated when the LTO, under the previous administration, undertook the computerization of its in-house information technology systems and contracted the establishment of the LTMS set up by the Dermalog-Holy Family Printing Corp.-Microgenesis joint venture group.

Earlier, the Dermalog JV assured that the two viral Bugatti Chiron sports cars were not registered with the LTO through the LTMS.