MANILA — The Land Transportation Office on Friday said a court order preventing it from receiving plastic cards for driver's licenses from its supplier was only a "temporary setback."

Despite a shortage of plastic cards that forced the agency to issue paper-based driver's licenses since April, a Quezon City court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the delivery of plastic license cards due to issues raised by a losing bidder.

"Nakikita lang namin ito as a temporary setback kasi at most 20 days lang ‘yan [TRO]," LTO chief Assistant Secretary Vigor Mendoza said.

"Ang paniniwala ko talaga, wala naman basehan para mag-issue ng injunction para sa pagpoproseso ng plastic cards na ‘to," he told TeleRadyo Serbisyo.

(We see this as a temporary setback because the TRO is valid for 20 days at most. I think there is no basis to issue an injunction on the processing of these plastic cards.)

WHAT DOES THE COURT SAY?

The transportation department in June awarded the contract for the plastic cards to Banner Plastic Card Inc.

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.

A post-qualification evaluation disqualified AllCard due to "delays" in another 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 deprived the firm 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.

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WHAT ARE LTO'S PLANS?

A hearing on the issue has been set on 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.

But if Banner's delivery of an initial 1 million plastic cards is allowed to push through, this will halve the current 1.7 million card backlog by September, LTO's Mendoza said.

"Ako naman, as LTO, ang habol ko lang yung injunction, ‘wag mapapatigil yung pag-supply ng mga driver’s license cards. Kung tama man yung petitioner, may remedyo naman ‘yan," the official said.

"Pero yung paghihinto ng card delivery, public interest ang tatamaan d’yan. Between public interest and business interest, public interest should always prevail," he continued.

(We are working against an injunction that would stop us from supplying driver’s license cards. If the petitioner is right, there are other remedies. But stopping the card delivery is against public interest.)

• DOTr receives first batch of vehicle plates
• 1 million driver's license cards expected by end-July: DOTr

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