Only 62 more days to go before we finally say goodbye to the administration of President BS Aquino, and like most Filipinos, we are hoping the new dispensation will finally do away with the likes of Transportation Secretary Jun Abaya. It baffles the mind how BS Aquino could have allowed a paragon of incompetence like Abaya to linger on and be deaf and blind to the clamor of people for the transportation chief’s head to roll.
Aside from the continually degenerating state of the MRT – with the tracks looking like walkways because an early morning breakdown on Monday caused passengers to walk (and most likely ruined their week) – one of the major issues would be against the LTO. Imagine, 2015 has come and gone and we’re approaching the halfway mark for 2016 but car owners have yet to receive the stickers and car plates they paid for?
There’s a clamor among vehicle owners who have not received the stickers and new-old plates to either be reimbursed for the amount they paid last year or better yet, be exempted from paying when they renew their registrations. After all, it’s obvious that stickers were not printed, otherwise they would have been available, right? So if nothing was printed, there was no production cost. So where did all that money go?
Unfortunately, vehicle owners will not be getting any reimbursement because according to LTO officials, the payment goes directly to the Bureau of Treasury and the agency does not refund what has been paid for by motorists. Besides which, it’s “not the LTO’s problem” to do any refunding because the LTO’s role is only “to collect payment and distribute the plates and stickers.” Well, they certainly do a good job of collecting payment but are lousy when it comes to the other half of their job description.
If you think about it, what LTO is doing is almost like robbery in broad daylight – they get your money as payment for a product that they don’t deliver. And the sad part about it is that there’s nothing you can do about it, because if you boycott registration, you get flagged down and harassed by LTO operatives.
When he took over as LTO chief, Roberto Cabrera promised an end to the license plate backlog within the last six months of the BS Aquino administration, as well as resolve the legal problems that the agency is embroiled in, but we are not holding our breath. Last we heard, the controversial and allegedly anomalous P3.8-billion car plates contract with a private group that partnered with a Dutch firm (whose equity was P100? Is that right)? was signed way back in 2014 by no less than DOTC chief Jun Abaya himself.
COA discovered the anomalies but they have yet to file charges against DOTC officials and the former LTO chief Aljun Tan under whose term the controversial contract was signed. Meantime, the plates—which were initially held up at Customs because the winning contractor did not have the money to pay for customs duties—had been reportedly released by Customs chief Alberto Lina because he took pity on the poor, suffering motorists. Now tell us, is that “daang matuwid” or what?
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