Senator Richard Gordon on Friday demanded the resignation of Land Transportation Office officials and employees for the delay in the Motorcycle Crime Prevention Act implementation following the 9,000 killings by assassins riding in motorcycles from 2010 to 2020.
Gordon made the call during the first Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on the delay in implementing the law.
That law intends to prevent criminals from using motorcycles as get-away vehicles after committing a crime.
The law imposed a bigger, readable and color-coded number plates to facilitate the tracing of motorcycles used in the commission of crimes.
“Enough is enough. We can no longer tolerate the situation where nothing is happening except people are being killed without the protection of the law,” Gordon said.
“If they cannot do that, then I demand the resignation of all the people of LTO who are responsible for it. It’s no joke that people are dying, people are losing their motorcycles to thieves, people are losing their bags, their cellphones because you are doing nothing.”
In the same hearing, Senator Imee Marcos asked the LTO for updates on the agency’s production of new motorcycle plates, particularly the number of plates the LTO had already produced.
LTO Chief Edgar Galvante told the committee that as of January 31, 2021, the agency’s plate-making plant had already produced 1,276,149 motorcycle plates and 5,965,374 blank plates to cover motorcycles that were registered from 2018 to 2020.
Meanwhile, records from the Philippine National Police showed that 36,848 people had been victimized by criminals in motorbikes from 2010 to 2020, of which 8,805 were killings.
Gordon noted that a dispute between two suppliers of number plates had caused the ballooning of the LTO’s backlog in the production of number plates.