A group of non-life insurance companies on Thursday asked President-elect Rodrigo Duterte and incoming Transportation Secretary Art Tugade to “clean” the Land Transportation Office of corrupt officials.
The Philippine Insurers and Reinsurers Association urged Duterte and Tugade to search and destroy the minority of corrupt officials in the LTO victimizing the motorists.
Pira said in a statement millions of motorists would benefit if Duterte and Tugade would fire the minority of errant officials at LTO who were behind the overpricing of the third-party liability insurance.
Pira chairman Augusto Hidalgo said the cleanup would encourage the honest and hardworking majority of LTO officials.
“Overpriced CTPLs simply cannot exist without the cooperation of errant LTO officials. To stop overpriced TPLs, the incoming administration must clean up the LTO,” Hidalgo said.
TPL is the minimum insurance required in the registration of motor vehicles. It protects vehicle owners from liabilities to third parties and provides compensation of up to P100,000 to motor accident victims.
Pira, which is composed of 65 non-life insurance companies, set up an authentication system called certificate of cover authentication facility in 2010 to make sure all CTPLs were genuine.
The association said it would now print CTPL policies that would contain the correct rates. It would also come up with posters to advise the motoring public not to pay more for their CTPLs.
“We challenge the LTO leadership to display such posters in all LTO branches for the education of the public,” Hidalgo said.
It said the correct prices of CTPLs were P300 for motorcyles and tricycles; P610 for cars and SUVs; and P1,200 for trucks. Some motorists were paying 50 percent more than these amounts.
LTO came up recently with a reformed CTPL project that would put the entire CTPL business under one insurance provider. According to the LTO, it was the solution to the problems that hounded the CTPL for years.
The Makati regional trial court declared the RCTPL project illegal, saying the LTO was intruding into the domain of the Insurance Commission in regulating insurance companies.
Hidalgo said Pira was not losing hope for a permanent solution acceptable to the LTO, the IC and the country’s insurers on the problems related to CTPL.
“We know that there are many honest officials in the LTO who just want to serve the motoring public. Pira would like to work with them. Together with the Insurance Commission, we hope we can come up with an education campaign to make the motoring public know the importance of being insured and how they can better make use of insurance in managing their everyday risks,” it said.