LTO’s woes are far from over: aside from a shortage of license cards that prompt them to extend the validity of driver’s licenses for the meantime, the LTO is also facing a big problem when it comes to car and motorcycle plates.

In a presscon by the LTO on April 26, Chief Jose Arturo Tugade told reporters that owners of new cars and motorcycles might need to make their own temporary plates, as supplies for license plates are running low. Tugade said that the LTO has less than 3,000 blank plates for cars and 735,000 plates for motorcycles.

According to his projection, the LTO will run out of license plates for motorcycles by June and for cars by July.

LTO is working on different contingencies to address the shortage, and this includes the authorization of using temporary plates provided by the vehicle owners themselves. “So for example, motorcycle owners, in the absence of a plate number, they can create a plate number, and on the plate number, it will say the motor vehicle file number of the motorcycle,” Tugade explains.

These DIY plate numbers will be verified by LTO officials by matching their MV file number to the vehicle’s Certificate of Registration.

By going for a DIY approach, Tugade acknowledged the concerns regarding this, which include a possible increase in crimes due to vehicles not using real plates and the process of how LTO will countercheck the DIY plates.

“This is one of the reasons why we should really push for the procurement of these license plates as much as possible. We should exert all effort to avoid a situation wherein we would run out of license plates,” Tugade emphasized.

The problem with car and motorcycle license plates is the same with license cards, where all of the procurement must be done by DOTr–and not LTO, for procurements that are Php 50 million and above. While the current procurement process is frustratingly slow, the move was supposed to avoid any controversial deals.

in the past, the LTO was investigated by the senate for its Php 3.8 billion contract for 15 million license plates due to anomalies, where a Php 978.8-million agreement for motorcycle plates was marred due to the LTO’s alleged bias for a particular contractor.