With the recent memorandum of the Land Transportation Office, the Motor Vehicle Inspection System (MVIS) is once again being rolled out in areas where they are operable.
Initially conceived to asses the road worthiness of vehicles being registered, there’s no doubt that this added requirement to registration will result in improved road safety. Countries like the US, UK, Singapore, Japan, and many parts of Europe have a similar system in place. It ensures that older vehicles continue to be properly maintained through objective tests.
The Department of Transportation (DOTr) had attempted to roll out this system last year. Yet our lawmakers urged the agency to make it optional as many citizens were still dealing with the pandemic, as the test would add another expense.
The facilities that conduct these tests, the Private Motor Vehicle Inspection Centers (PMVIC), were also undergoing growing pains with reports of erroneous results from motorists. Now, a year later, with the price of testing reduced, it’s hoped that the kinks have been resolved.
Despite the derision railed against the PMVICs, it’s understandable why the DOTr wants to get the program rolling. We need better standards for testing the road-worthiness of vehicles to keep our roads safe.
Putting up a PMVIC which employs high-technology equipment to conduct a comprehensive test on the vehicle requires a big investment, its cost can reach tens of millions of pesos. Return of investment may not be fast as the standard PMVIC has only a number of lanes to process customers in a day, each one of them required to do that only once a year.
Because of the cost of of putting up a PMVIC, there are only 55 such facilities around the country now. Clearly that is not enough to allow the MVIS program to accommodate all of the nation’s motor vehicles.
All the 55 PMVICs are for private vehicles. Only 11 such facilities are located in Metro Manila. Some provinces do not have one facility in their immediate area. Meanwhile, larger facilities that can handle public transport and commercial vehicles have yet to go online.
While it’s easy to understand the DOTr’s eagerness to get the program running, there simply aren’t enough for all of the vehicles in the country. But since an inspection certificate is a requirement for vehicle registration, motorists will have to sit through the long lines.
To make the required certificate worth the processing time, the LTO should consider giving incentives. One is to grant a two- or three-year registration validity to vehicles that passed the inspection. Of course, the motorists should pay for the registration fees for two or three years too.
Another incentive could be a discounted Motor Vehicle Usage Charge (MVUC) for well-maintained vehicles which will less likely do damage to our roads.
These incentives can convince motorists that the time for the long wait at the PMVICs will be worth it.