Half of the Philippine Land Transport Agency's offices can issue more than 230000 driver's license cards without a driver's license.

Philippine Land Transport Agency (LTO) Director Jose Arturo "Jay Art" Tugade (Jose Arturo "Jay Art" Tugade) said during a House hearing that 172 of the 350 Land Transport Agency offices across the country no longer have plastic driver's license cards.

Tugard said: "As of May 2, 2023, we have a total inventory of 83,490 plastic cards on hand. However, the backlog of plastic driver's licenses is 234,149, which means that the number of cards missing has reached 150,659."

It is reported that the purchase bid for plastic driver's licenses is scheduled for May 24, while the first batch of delivery is scheduled for July this year.

Once the plastic cards are distributed to the various agencies, the Land Transport Agency office will work overtime over the weekend to address the backlog, Tugard said.

at the hearing, the land transport department briefed on the contingency measures it had taken to alleviate the shortage of plastic cards.

"First, we redistributed the supply of available plastic driver's license cards. We forecasted and adjusted the existing stocks in different offices. The second contingency measure taken by the Land Transport Agency was to authorize the use of temporary driver's licenses, which is to recognize official receipts printed on paper as temporary driver's licenses," Tugard said."

He further pointed out: "In order to solve the shortage of plastic cards, another policy we have issued is that the Land Transport Department will extend the validity of driving licenses that expire on April 24, 2023 to October 24, 2023."

Bagong Henerasyon Party MP Bernadette Herrera expressed his gratitude to the Land Transport Department for the questioning at the hearing.

She said: "Thank you to the Ministry of Transport and the Land Transport Agency for resolving this issue before the committee's deliberations. I hope we will not encounter such a situation again in the future."