'LTO-IT provider illegal'

MANILA, Philippines - Information technology firms providing connectivity and computer services to private emission testing centers operating at the Land Transportation Office said that the pilot Direct Connect facility project being spearheaded by LTO-IT provider Stradcom Corp. was illegal.

Lawyer Dan Barrameda, vice president for legal and corporate affairs of RDMS, one of the four PETC-IT providers serving the more than 600 PETCs conducting mandatory smoke emission testing, said the project has no legal basis and even violated an order of the Department of Transportation and Communications. “It has no legal basis. If it has no legal basis, then it’s illegal,” Barrameda told The Star.

Barrameda said that DOTC Order 37 issued in 2005 identified only four firms — RDMS, Cyberlink, Eurolink, and ETC IT, as the IT firms accredited to provide connectivity and other services to PETCs authorized to  conduct smoke emission tests on vehicles. With the pilot implementation of the Direct Connect project, Barrameda said that LTO effectively added Stradcom to the four accredited firms.

“DOTC Order 2005-37 did not mention any Direct Connect project. It also did not mention Stradcom (as an accredited PETC-IT provider),” Barrameda said.

Alberto Suansing, LTO chief, for his part, brushed off the charge of any anomaly in the pilot implementation of the said project. “How can that be illegal when Stradcom is our IT provider? We have a contract with them for 10 years. They are supposed to manage our data. The question here is: What is the job of PETC-IT providers?,” Suansing told The Star in a phone interview.

Suansing said that it was the PETC-IT providers who are facing serious trouble with charges of conflict of interest over the cross ownership of some PETCs with the owners and operators of the four IT firms.