The past few months have not been easy for the Land Transportation Office (LTO). The shortage of driver’s license cards did no favors to the agency’s reputation, and so did the possible shortage of license plates for motorcycles and cars. On top of all those, Jose Arturo “Jay Art” Tugade resigned from his post after just six months, citing differences with DOTr chief, Jaime Bautista.
Now, there’s a new LTO officer in charge (OIC) on board, and it will be interesting to see how Atty. Hector A. Villacorta gets along with Jaime Bautista. Speaking of Bautista, the DOTr chief said that the agency is finalizing the procurement of at least 500,000 license cards for release by July.
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"Right now, there's an ongoing procurement. There is already the lowest bidder. We are just doing a post-qualification of the lowest calculated bid. If we will be able to finalize this, if we will qualify the lowest bidder, we should be able to get maybe 500,000 licenses in July," said Bautista to the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee.
By Bautista’s estimates, there is still a backlog of 690,000 license cards for release. To alleviate the situation, the LTO extended the validity of all driver’s licenses expiring from Apr. 24 onwards until Oct. 31, 2023. That is according to a memorandum issued by the LTO, dated April 21, 2023. The DOTr secretary also said that there are about 70,000 license cards reserved for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).
