LTO-7 chief files case vs one of his officers

An officer of the Land Transportation Office (LTO) is facing criminal complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas for his alleged failure to follow the rules and procedure in inspecting motor vehicles.

LTO-7 Regional Director Victor Emmanuel Caindec yesterday filed a violation of Republic Act 3019 or Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act against Engineer Bernardo Borromeo, Jr., who used to head the LTO-Talisay City Extension.

He is now the approving officer of the LTO-Cebu City District Office.

“Due to Engineer Borromeo’s gross negligence, public safety is endangered by the vehicles which are registered and allowed to use the roads without the proper and correct determination of its road worthiness,” read the complaint.

Caindec said based on the rules and procedures set by the Land Transportation Commission, it established that the standard processing time for the completion of the motor vehicle registration is 60 minutes per vehicle, and the standard motor vehicles inspection activity is 20 minutes per vehicle.

In a day, he said, the ideal number of vehicles inspected is 24 motor vehicles - taken from 480 minutes a day divided by 20 minutes per vehicle. With said figure, in a month there will be 528 motor vehicles inspected from 24 motor vehicles per day multiplied by 22 working days.

However, in the case of LTO –Talisay City which was then under the supervision of Borromeo, there were 9,256 motor vehicles inspected in January 2018.

There were 10,019 vehicles inspected in February; 15,723 in March; 19,280 in April; and 19,986 in May, all in 2018.

“While reviewing the reports, I was alarmed and amazed to the point of disbelief, to say the least, on the marked increase in the performance output of the Talisay City Extension Office,” read the complaint.

Considering the LTO-Talisay City has three inspectors, Caindec said the ideal number of vehicles to be inspected would be 1,584 per month.

Borromeo, in his letter dated May 18, 2018 addressed to Caindec, admitted that they focused their inspection on the body condition and safety lights of the motor vehicles. Miscellaneous transactions were not included.

“The process for the inspection is we let the clients prepare their requirements before the inspection to avoid unnecessary time loss; we practice efficiency to produce a fast and transparent process,” portion of the letter reads, adding that most of the vehicles they inspected are motorcycles.

“…we let the clients line their motorcycles so we can do a simultaneous inspection. Doing this method can accommodate at least eight to 10 motorcycles at the same time,” the letter further read.

With that method, Borromeo explained that they can cater more motor vehicle than the previous methods they used, which is one by one.

He said it takes three minutes per 10 motorcycles by batch per inspector. For other vehicles, he added they allocate two minutes.

Aside from their three inspectors, they have also seven logins who have multi-function, all are fulltime. –

Mylen P. Manto/GAN