‘A time to tear down’

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1- 3)

Rumor has it that the folks at the Land Transportation Office or LTO are redesigning themselves and proposing the establishment of a new government to be called the Land Transportation Authority. Interesting idea but done the wrong way around.

On the surface I suppose that by putting up a new agency, the new management at the LTO will effectively be putting an end to the LTO and all the negative perceptions and history of the agency. It is actually not a bad idea considering no matter what they do, the people at the LTO are “caught between a rock and a hard place.” Under present circumstance. The LTO will continue to be the “Na pag uutusan” or goffer or implementer of other peoples’ policies or bad ideas that in turn gets the LTO and their frontliners into trouble with the public.

Most customers of the LTO don’t realize it but the agency is merely a service unit and implementing arm of the DOTr. All of the current nightmares at the LTO like No plates, No stickers, No plastic cards for licenses etc. are mostly as a result of policies and politics that rained down upon the agency courtesy of previous administrations and incompetent Cabinet Secretaries and their corrupt political appointees to the LTO. Many of the problems resulted from centralization policies that were actually a scheme to centralize decision making powers in order to corner contracts, grease money and pay-offs from impatient vehicle manufacturers, importers and owners while making LTO personnel and officers powerless.

As a result, the public hates them and those at the DOTr don’t or can’t do much to help them and are not inclined to prioritize addressing the problems of the LTO because to them the LTO is just a licensing office compared to major projects such as trains, ships and planes as well as ports and airports.

So, would killing the LTO and forgetting it ever existed really be the right solution? Yes, but not in the way the planners are thinking of. Their plan will effectively be like giving the same dog a different name or a new collar but won’t solve the enormity of their problem. They’re going to need a bigger boat and a bigger gun to deal with the problem. In the beginning (1912) they were just the Division of Motor Vehicles under the Bureau of Public Works, then they were upgraded to the Motor Vehicles Office, then the Land Transportation Commission.

Back then (1960’s) there were very few vehicles all over the country compared to the millions that we now have in Greater Metro Manila alone. If one can remember, we only had a two lane Hi-way 54 and Roxas Boulevard was called Dewey Boulevard. During the Marcos era the LTC was turned into the Bureau of Land Transportation then when Cory came to power the BLT was renamed back as the LTC and now it’s the LTO.

The problem is even after the market and clients of the LTO exploded into the millions, the politicians continue to treat the LTO as a mere agency for issuing licenses and vehicle registrations. The Tapal-tapal or patch work approach of legislators and government officials never really studied the growing problems and never got out of their “it’s just an agency” attitude. So the LTO got trapped and hog-tied in the incompetence of those above them while being swamped and unable to serve their millions of unhappy customers all over the Philippines.

What the LTO needs to do is wake up and realize the magnitude of their responsibility, the statistical volume of their transactions with the public and the total impact of what they do (or fail to do) upon the economy, the environment, the quality of life and their contribution to governance and government. STOP BEING SMALL MINDED and push for what needs to be done because no one will do it for them. What the current LTO needs to happen is for them to be transformed into the size and authority compatible with their real role and responsibility. In other words the LTO needs to become the Department of Motor Vehicles!

Why should the office that deals with more people in more places nationwide and collects billions of pesos be treated and run as a mere agency? The reason the LTO has never managed to do their job in all aspects is simply because they never had the power to make decisions, authority or funding to do what they are suppose to do because they were never the operational or political priority. By creating a Department of Motor Vehicle (like in the United States) we would have a department that sets its own programs, budgets and personnel and have the decision making powers that are specific to Motor Vehicle concerns and not an agency that has to go to the DOTr Secretary with a begging bowl or be last in line.

If the Telecommunications sector has already been given its own “Department” and Cabinet Secretary in the Department of Information Technology and Communications, why not one for Motor Vehicles? In fact we should have had a DMV many years ago and way ahead of the DITC. Now is a good time to tear down and a good time to build something new and something better. It’s called OD or Organizational Development.

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