MANILA — The Quezon City Regional Trial Court has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) that prevents the Land Transportation Office (LTO) from receiving plastic cards for driver's licenses from its supplier for 20 days due to issues raised by a losing bidder.

This, despite a shortage of plastic cards that forced the agency to issue paper-based driver's licenses since April.

The transportation department in June awarded the contract for the plastic cards to Banner Plastic Card Inc., the same contractor responsible for LandBank's Visa debit cards.

Banner submitted a bid of P219 million inclusive of taxes for procuring the license cards, higher than the P177-million bid of its competitor and petitioner AllCard Inc.

Both firms made lower bids than the government's estimated project cost of P240 million, which aimed to produce around 5.2 million cards.

However, a post-qualification evaluation found that AllCard was disqualified due to "delays" in a project involving the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and other government agencies.

But the Quezon City court said that "deficiencies cited in the correspondences made by the concerned government agencies were merely taken at face value and never verified."

It added that the LTO "failed to fully disclose" to AllCard the context of the alleged delays in its contract with BSP, which amounted to at least 10 percent of the contract price, effectively depriving AllCard of the opportunity to file a meaningful protest.

Additionally, the LTO denied the petitioner's request to file a motion for reconsideration after being disqualified, even before the seven-day period provided by law to file a protest had lapsed.

LTO chief Assistant Secretary Vigor Mendoza said the TRO was a "temporary" setback.

“Temporary delay lang ito, 20 days. Pero I’m confident on Aug. 22, makikita ng korte yung basehan kung bakit di kailangan ipahinto ang pagdeliver at pagproseso ng mga drivers license cards," Vigor said.

(This is just a temporary delay, 20 days. But I'm confident that on Aug. 22, the court will see why the delivery and processing of driver's license cards should not be stopped.)

"Ang pinakaimportante ang tinatawag nilang grave and irreparable damage. Ano ba ang napaka-grabe at irreparable damage na mangyayari sa petitioner kung patuloy ang pagdeliver at pagproseso ng mga cards na ito? Eh ang nakikita ko eh hindi naman yata grave, hindi naman irreparable. Yun ang ating ipapakita sa korte come Aug. 22," he continued.

(It is important for the petitioner to show that the delivery and processing of these cards will result in grave and irreparable damage. But I see no such damage. That's what we will show to the court come Aug. 22.)

If the court's decision does not favor the LTO, it is considering options such as extending the validity of expiring driver's licenses for six months.

Banner Plasticard was expected to deliver an initial 1 million plastic cards by the end of September. It was set to provide all 5.2 million cards worth P219 million by February 21 next year.

If the court grants LTO's plea, it believes that the continued delivery of the initial 1 million plastic cards will eliminate more than half of the current 1.7 million card backlog by September.

"The greater public interest should prevail over the business interest of one or two… Yung kapalit nito is something even graver. We're talking about public interest… Ang aking habol is being able to deliver the cards to the motorist at the soonest possible time," Mendoza said

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• 1 million driver's license cards expected by end-July: DOTr

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