After the City of San Fernando in La Union and the Province of Ilocos Norte have opted to suspend MVIS operations, a non-government organization (NGO) is now taking steps to challenge its implementation.
This group is heading to the Supreme Court to file a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the privatization of the Motor Vehicle Inspection System (MVIS) by the Land Transportation Office (LTO).
The group, Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC), said that they are set to ask the Supreme Court to suspend the implementation of the new MVIS through Private Motor Vehicle Inspection Centers (PMVICs) on grounds that it skipped public consultation, and exorbitant inspection fees.
“There was no public consultation and it seems that they [LTO] rushed this decision. What we want now is to ask for a moratorium and have a public consultation participated [in] by sectors concerned,” said VACC’s current president, Arsenio Evangelista.
Evangelista added that, had a public consultation been made, it would’ve required the creation of a Technical Working Group (TWG) to ensure that there will be reasonable regulations that would govern the operations of PMVICs.
Currently, motorists are not happy with the PMVIC’s high inspection fees, as well as parameters that, according to motorists, are too stringent and only possible for brand new cars to pass.
The LTO has said earlier that the fees are justified, considering the amount of investment that the PMVIC operators had to shell out, as well as to keep their operations up to standards.
Also, LTO assistant secretary, Edgar Galvante, explained earlier that the decision to privatize motor vehicle inspection centers was due to the lack of funding from the government, that’s why they had to tap the private sector to make a program that was sitting in the dust bin for 12-long-years a reality.
“12 years, I repeat—12 years. For the past 12 years pinag-iisipan na po, pinagpa-planuhan na po itong MVIS (for the past 12 years we've been planning and refining the MVIS). But only during the term of Secretary Tugade and Asec Galvante, na talagang pinatupad (that it was implemented). That [was] 2018, and we rolled it out 2019,” said DOTr Chief of Staff and Assistant Secretary for Procurement and Project Implementation, Atty. Giovanni Lopez.
So far, out of the planned 138 PMVICs across the country, only 24 are operational.
