Sabotage by LTO ranks eyed behind delays in license plates

Still haven’t received your license plates? Disgruntled employees from the Land Transportation Office (LTO) may be behind it.

In an interview last week, LTO spokesperson Jason Salvador expressed the agency’s suspicions that delays in the release of license plates weren’t due to any shortage in supplies, but due to “sabotage” from within the the LTO’s ranks.

“In the course of the license plates standardization program, we’ve been encountering several challenges from within and from the outside. One is the perceived deliberate delay in the ordering,” Salvador said, in a phone interview on Thursday.

“First, we thought it was just some failures here and there, but over time, it [began to] seem deliberate. [Employees on the ground] haven’t been ordering [supplies] correctly despite the fact that we’ve issued several … instructions,” Salvador said.

Salvador noted that when the public inquired on the delayed license plates, the LTO’s frontline services had a tendency to reply “Just file a complaint with our higher-ups.” “It’s like they’re trying to incite [outrage],” Salvador said.

Salvador pinned the blame on employees who might be against the “reforms” or changes the LTO has been implementing the past two years. “This might be one of the [ways] they can get back at management,” Salvador said.

Salvador said they would investigate employees responsible for any gridlock in the license plates’ issuance. “We have already issued memorandums, and if they still don’t comply, then heads will roll,” Salvador warned.

Earlier in April, when the LTO received flak from the public over the start of the implementation of their “No Registration, No Travel” policy, the Department of Transportation and Communication blamed private car dealers for the delay in the license plates’ issuance.

The DOTC maintained that they have already issued to car dealers the license plates of cars newly registered at the LTO’s National Capital Region (NCR) office. SFM