THE Land Transportation Office (LTO) has decided to temporarily suspend the implementation of its new project called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) following criticisms from lawmakers and the transport sector.
Congressmen Rodolfo Plaza of Agusan del Sur Teodoro Casiño of Bayan Muna party-list has each disapproved of LTO’s nationwide implementation of RFID last October 1, citing alleged overpricing and irregularities.
The two congressmen have said in a report by ABS-CBN that the RFID project was introduced into an LTO information technology project without the benefit of a public hearing or bidding.
The P2.45 billion RFID project is an identification system which will transmit details on the identity of the vehicle and the person driving it using radio waves.
RFID uses a sticker with a microchip that stores a unique number assigned to a vehicle. This number is used to identify and verify all necessary information regarding the vehicle through a reader used to retrieve and pass the same information to the LTO database.
The RFID chip, which is the size of a computer chip, can hold information on the vehicle and its owner, and can be monitored anytime of the day through the use of RFID readers.
The LTO plans to install tiny RFID tags on some 4,760,593 vehicles that will be registered starting Oct. 1. It expects to raise P1.6 billion in revenues from the project.
At present, RFID technology is commercially available in the United States and is used for employee identification, medical history and billing, highway toll tags and security access cards.
In a press statement emailed to this paper, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero expressed his opinion on the issue and called on the government to scrap and re-bid the planned RFID tags project to dispel any fears of irregularity and ensure that the rights of individuals are not abused.
Escudero added the government needs to answer the questions regarding the supposed dubious procurement process and the lack of sufficient public consultations on the project has been raised.
“The DOTC should re-do the whole procurement process. It should also conduct exhaustive consultations so the people will know how this project will, if at all, better their lives,” the opposition senator said.
In an earlier response, LTO chief Arturo Lomibao said in a report by ABS-CBN that his agency “is willing to delay the project in order to conduct more public consultations on the matter.”
Lomibao added in the said report that the DOTC approved the RFID project and awarded it to Stradcom since the original contract gave the company exclusive rights to implement IT projects in the LTO.
But an official of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has said that Stradcom does not have a permit to operate RFIDs in the country.
Vince Dizon, Stradcom vice president for media and public relations, explained in the same report that the RFID is part of the company's original contract to handle all technological requirements of the LTO.
With the temporary suspension of the project, information dissemination will still continue in our level, LTO-9 assistant regional director Mohammad Yusoph Lamping told this paper.
If implemented, carnapping and smuggling would have been eradicated and kolorom vehicles will be gone since RFID will electronically identify and verify franchise records of public utility vehicles, he added.
REPORT BY JONG CADION