LTO urged to deliver car plates ASAP

Following the Supreme Court’s lifting of its temporary restraining order (TRO) on 700,000 impounded vehicle plates, the government should now “end the plate-less era in a fast and furious manner,” Sen. Grace Poe said yesterday.

Poe, chairperson of the Senate committee on public services, said vehicle and motorcycle owners already paid for their plates but the delay in the issuance “is now as long as the period World War II was fought in the Philippines.”

“I would like to echo what millions of owners of vehicles with temporary, handwritten license plates want government to do: Please step on the gas,” she said.

The senator said that while myriad legal and budgeting concerns must be threshed out to restart the plate procurement process, perhaps other legal ways can be explored to fast-track the delivery of these plates.

The senator noted the car and motorcycle plates covered by the injunction, “even if they are fully released will hardly make a dent on the demand.”

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto welcomed the lifting of the TRO on the distribution of license plates but their eventual distribution “might be a case of too little, too late.”

For one, about half the number of plates had been released to vehicle owners before the high court issued the TRO, Recto said.

It can be recalled that SC’s injunction covered 300,000 pairs of plates for cars and other four-wheel vehicles, and 400,000 plates for motorcyles.

But the surge in vehicle sales over the past three years “has ballooned the deficit,” Recto said.

With the high court ruling, Recto hopes all the legal, auditing and budgeting issues that hindered the production of plates will be resolved.

“I agree that those who bungled this must be sanctioned. But in the meantime, for the sake of the car owners, and in the interest of motoring safety, can we not legally expedite the issuance of plates?” he said.