The Land Transportation Office is targeting to produce 400,000 pairs of license plates before the end of the year to partly address its whopping 13 million backlog of such plates that has been piling up since the Aquino administration nearly a decade ago.
According to LTO chief Teofilo Guadiz, the agency aims to manufacture 800,000 license plates by yearend, as the backlog of these simple stamped metal plates for four-wheeled vehicles has already reached 2.3 million pairs and 11.5 million license plates for motorcycles.
The agency had produced 337,607 pairs of license plates as of October 5, and Guadiz said they would be able to clear the backlog by 90 percent by December 2023 if the budget is available.
The LTO plate-making facility in Quezon City is already implementing extended hours and shifting of personnel to keep up with the demand, he added. The agency’s i-Robots are also fully functional, according to Guadiz.
The Department of Budget and Management has approved a funding of P4.7 billion to address the license plate backlog, lower than the P6.8 billion requested by the LTO that said it is looking at tapping a private contractor to manufacture additional license plates next year.
It is difficult to imagine how the production of simple stamped metal license plates could prove to be such a monumental problem for any supposedly competent government, yet here we are, facing a decade-long license plate backlog that if Filipino motorists are fortunate, will take yet another year to be resolved.
The license plate backlog is entering its third administration. The least Filipinos can ask for by now is for a solution to be found soon, and perhaps our government can move on to solving the other more complex problems hounding the country, such as the education crisis, rising cost of living, debt and inflation, and uplifting the lives of more Filipinos who cannot even be bothered with a license plate backlog as they remain mired in poverty.*
