Millions of pieces of plastic cards are expected to be delivered further this year to address the backlog on plastic-printed driver’s licenses, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said on Wednesday, March 27.

In fact, DOTr Secretary Jaime J. Bautista said that in May this year, around 2.2 million more will be delivered which are part of the 3.2 million undelivered plastic cards that were affected by the injunction order of a Quezon City court last year.

With the lifting of the injunction order based on the Court of Appeals decision last week, one million plastic cards were already delivered to the Land Transportation Office Central Office in Quezon City on Monday, March 25.

“After 45 days after the delivery of the one million, there will be around 2.2 million more plastic cards that will be delivered. So this will be enough to address the backlog on driver’s license,” said Bautista during his inspection of the delivered one million plastic cards.

Based on the LTO data, there will be 4.1 million backlog in plastic-printed driver’s licenses at the end of this month and the 3.2 million plastic cards that the Court of Appeals allowed to be delivered will not be sufficient to cover the backlog.

The LTO issues 550,000 driver’s licenses on a monthly basis.

In order to address the issue, Bautista said they are now expediting the procurement of around 6.5 million plastic cards, the fund will come from the General Appropriations Act of 2024.

In the meantime, he said the focus is the downloading of the one million plastic cards to LTO regional offices starting next week in order to achieve the April 15 target date of the start of the processing and claiming of driver’s licenses. 

Schedule of Renewal

On Tuesday, March 27, the LTO issued the schedule of the renewal of driver’s license, explaining that the schedule was aimed at ensuring the orderly processing in all its offices nationwide.

Based on the LTO memo, the following schedule for renewal are approved: 

1.    For driver’s licenses with expiration dates from April 1 to August 31, 2023 and April 1 to April 30, 2024, they are scheduled to renew their licenses from April 15 to April 30, 2024;  

2.    For driver’s licenses with expiration dates from September 1 to December 31, 2023 and May 1 to May 31, 2024, they are scheduled to renew their licenses from May 1 to May 31, 2024;  

3.    For driver’s licenses with expiration dates from January 1 to March 31 2024  and June 1 to June 30, 2024, they are scheduled to renew their licenses from June 1 to June 30, 2024. 

“Failure of the driver to renew his/her driver’s license within the prescribed schedule shall render the license expired,” the memorandum read. 

But wait….

Bautista, however, said that the delivered plastic cards will still be subjected to inspection by experts from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) to determine if those delivered complied with the terms of reference of the contract, particularly on the aspect of security features.  

“There added security features which the LTO knows and at the same time, we also want the DOST to check if these plastic cards would last up to 10 years because as you all know, the  driver’s license validity is now up to 10 years,” said Bautista. 

Once the DOST inspection cleared the delivered plastic cards, Secretary Bautista said they will immediately be downloaded to the regional offices for the start of the processing and claiming by April 15. 

Good job!

Bautista also lauded the efforts of the LTO chief Assistant Secretary Vigor D. Mendoza in constantly coordinating with the Office of the Solicitor General in coming up with strong arguments that eventually led to the lifting of the Writ of Preliminary Injunction on the delivery of the remaining 3.2 million undelivered plastic cards from Banner Plastic, Inc.  

In its order, the Court of Appeals stressed that the Quezon City Regional Trial Court which issued the injunction order should have not entertained the case filed by losing bidder in the first place since the administrative process of appeal was not observed when it immediately filed a case in the court. 

“The decision of the Court of Appeals only vindicated the decision of our Bids and Awards Committee. And we in the DOTr are elated that the Associate Justices of the Court of Appeals agreed with the arguments we raised,” said Bautista.