Last June 30, 2022, the Duterte administration officially concluded and the Marcos administration has begun. Unfortunately for the Land Transportation Office (LTO), it wasn’t able to fulfill the millions in vehicular plate number backlog, especially for motorcycles, which still have 12 million plates undelivered.
Just recently, the agency’s Officer-in-Charge (OIC), Atty. Romeo Vera Cruz has confirmed that to address the plate number backlog for all types of vehicles, the LTO needs PHP 6.8-billion in funding. That’s PHP 4.2-billion more than what the former agency chief, Edgar Galvante said during an April 2022 interview that focused on the issue of motorcycle plate number backlog.
According to the OIC, the agency has all the capabilities to produce plates for both motorcycles and four-wheeled vehicles. However, they still need to acquire additional funding so that the LTO can buy spare parts and get all of their engravers up and running.
“Wala pong problema sa pag-produce ng plaka because we have modern plate-making plant. Kapag mayroon pong plate eh gagawin po natin iyan. Our engravers are five years old na, may mga problema na po sa mga spare parts,” said Vera Cruz.
[There is no problem with producing plates because we have a modern plate-making plant. Once we have the plates, then we’ll work on them. Our engravers are five-years-old already. We have a problem with spare parts]
Earlier this year, the LTO acquired a new plate stamping machine for motorcycles that is capable of stamping 450 motorcycle plates per hour in an efficient and systematic manner or 3,600 motorcycle plates in an eight-hour shift a day, and 7,200 motorcycle plates a day on a two-shift basis. The machine, which will be manned by two LTO personnel, can produce a total of 158,400 motorcycle plates a month on a two-shift per day basis.
