The Land Transportation Office (LTO) inventory of plastic license cards is running low with only 147,000 cards left and is expected to be exhausted by the end of this month. The agency will be printing the temporary driver’s licenses at the back of the official receipts and is expecting holders to take care of the paper license until the plastic cards are made available.

Funny. LTO has had a similar experience in 2015 of which they extended the expiring licenses to 150 days just to accommodate the period needed for the plastic licenses to arrive and be made available. The reason? It’s the same as today. Problematic procurement procedures.

LTO being a line agency under the Department of Transportation (DOTr) is pointing its finger to a department order of its mother agency that requires all procurements above P50 million to be initiated and conducted by DOTr itself as the culprit. The total amount of procurement for the 5.2 million new license cards is P245 million. It said that as early as November 2022 they have already sounded the alarm on the depleting cards. However, as of last month DOTr is still evaluating the terms of reference (TOR) for the procurement.

DOTr explained that after the pre-bid conference, they have decided to re-assess the terms of reference and procedures to determine a more economical, efficient and effective approach.

It’s just unfortunate that since the failure in 2015, the agencies involved in the procurement process are still working on the “economical, efficient and effective approach”. The election of the new administration is not a reason as the same technocrats and employees are running the show. The situation simply exemplifies how uneconomical, inefficient and ineffective are the people at LTO and DOTr. Its been eight years since the last shortage of cards and they are still talking about how to address the problem.

Procedures are cold-bloodied things and are designed to ease the work involved. It only becomes difficult if those who implement it attempt to tweak it to serve their interests. Perhaps it’s the commission or maybe it’s about some unfulfilled requests for favors.

In the end, the taxpayers suffer while those involved are working their way to hide behind technicalities as if to show that they are working hard to resolve the problem.