PETC direct connect facility suspension only for one week

MANILA, Philippines – The Land Transportation Office said that the Department of Transportation and Communications’ order for it to resume the pilot implementation of its private emission testing center (PETC) Direct Connect Facility was only temporary.

Assistant Secretary Virginia Torres, LTO chief, said that the order of DOTC Secretary Jose de Jesus suspending the PETC Direct Connect Facility project, would only be for seven days, or just this week to give the DOTC’s Legal Division to conduct an exhaustive study on the project. “It will be resumed after seven days. Basically, it will be good only for this week,” Torres told The STAR.

Torres said the DOTC investigation would be finished, and a decision would be made on whether to totally scrap the project or resume it, by next week. “It’s all up to the DOTC,” Torres said.

Earlier, De Jesus ordered the revocation of LTO Memorandum Circular No. VPT-2010-1365 that Torres issued earlier this month that suspended the pilot implementation of the Direct Connect Facility.

The LTO’s PETC Direct Connect Facility, being implemented on a pilot basis by the agency’s IT contractor Stradcom Corp. when it was suspended by Torres, allowed government-accredited PETCs to connect directly to the LTO system for the online “real-time” upload of photographs taken of all car emission tests conducted by PETCs, to prevent so-called “non-appearance” cases.

The project has largely been opposed by the four PETC-IT providers accredited by the DOTC, to provide connectivity services to PETCs to allow the online “real-time” upload of photographs of car smoke tests, since it allowed erring PETCs, even those earlier padlocked by the LTO for engaging in “non-appearance” cases, to reopen by connecting directly to Stradcom Corp.

The PETC-IT providers also pointed out that allowing Stradcom to provide connectivity was illegal since the DOTC had accredited only four IT firms to provide such sertvices to PETCs.

Smoke emission testing process of the LTO has been bedeviled by anomalies, with persistent “non-appearance” cases taking place supposedly as a result of connivance between erring PETCs, the PETC-IT providers and owners of smoke-belching vehicles, allowing smoke-belching vehicles to get renewal of their registration and congesting the country’s major thoroughfares.

Smoke emission testing of all vehicles seeking the renewal of their LTO registration has been made mandatory by the Clean Air Act.