Gov’t to file case vs Stradcom

MANILA, Philippines — The government will file appropriate cases to recover the estimated P2 billion losses from the Land Transportation Office’s (LTO) deal with the Stradcom Corp, Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas disclosed during a budget hearing in the Senate on Monday.

Stradcom is the information technology provider of the LTO.

“The department position is that we will recoup all unauthorized exploitation of this database which is owned by the government. The only method for doing is through litigation. We will file the appropriate cases for restitution of these amounts,” Roxas told the Senate committee on finance.

Roxas said they have already directed their legal department to go through the Stardcom contract line by line to find out exactly what were they authorized and not authorized to do, and whether any government approvals or concurrences were issued in the past.

“The database is owned by the government and there ought not to be any unauthorized use or profit-making activity arising from this data without the concurrence, without the approval of the government,” he pointed out.

From 2007 to 2011, LTO chief Virginia Torres said their estimated loss from the contract was about P2 billion.

Torres could not initially provide the committee the inter-connectivity fees collected by the Stradcom, saying that it had entered an agreement with various companies “without LTO knowing it.”

“We don’t even have an idea how much we are losing?” asked Senator Panfilo Lacson.

“We have an idea how much we have collected and we could only make an estimate,” said Torres, “Your honor, our estimate is P2 billion plus. About P2 billion because the inter-connectivities were only collected not during 1998 but perhaps during 2007.”

Asked again by Lacson if the P2 billion was the government losses from the contract, Torres answered yes.