THE Federated Land Transport Organizations of the Philippines (FELTOP) questioned the Land Transportation Office (LTO) over its continued fee collection for the processing of public utility vehicle (PUV) registration renewals and miscellaneous transactions.
The transport group officially asked again the help of Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Jaime J. Bautista regarding the alleged defiance of the LTO-National Capital Region (LTO-NCR) on the cessation of such collection despite the latter’s swift issuance of an order to stop receiving the charges.
“We have already sent a letter-complaint to Secretary Bautista regarding this seeming non-compliance of LTO chief, Asec [Assistant Secretary] Vigor Mendoza II, to his directive issued last December to stop collecting the P169 computer fees,” said Jun Rustico Braga, board director and spokesperson of FELTOP.
Prior to this, the organization filed a graft case in November of last year against Mendoza before the Office of the Ombudsman for such anomalous activity.
The group’s PUV driver-members have gathered evidence, mainly official receipts of LTO transactions with the LTO-NCR, particularly their PUVREC (Public Utility Vehicle Registration Center) QC (Quezon City) and PUVREC Pasay showing their collection of such amount.
FELTOP earlier welcomed the DOTr chief’s prompt action on their previous complaint. In fact, Bautista met the group’s officials, led by its president Diolito Inosanto, and officers Namita Lorenzo and Braga, in his office at the OSec DOTr in the Primex Tower along EDSA in Greenhills, San Juan City last December 20.
The following day, Mendoza then issued a memorandum order for all LTO regional and district offices to not process transactions involving PUVs via the old LTO Information Technology system that requires the payment of the P169 computer fee, instead to process it through the Land Transportation Management System (LTMS) free of charge.
Such amount had been previously removed already when the LTO, under the previous Duterte administration, assumed the computerization of its in-house IT systems and contracted for the establishment of the LTMS.