I had my license renewed yesterday. Took me two days to get everything. I visited the Land Transportation Office Eastern Licensing Center (along P. Guevarra at San Juan)
Day 1 - Medical Tests
Drug test (P250)
I took the urine drug test at Labstat Laboratories. Such test requires a great amount of endurance and self-control. Taking a leak before a urine test can be very frustrating because one can only have so much bodily fluids. A lesson I learned the last time I took such test.
Medical (P50)
The medical test was a comedy. I was tested for 3 things. Height, weight and vision quality.
- 5′11″ (something that hasn’t changed since grade 7)
- 228 lbs (something that has changed a LOT since highschool)
- 50/75 (though I think i’m already hitting 75/100. I need new eye glasses)
Regarding the perception test, I tried doing it Armaggedon style - memorizing the letters on the board rather than reading it. Good thing I have phortnographic memory, I was able to memorize all the characters. Unfortunately, I got the ordering wrong. So the doctor looks at me with a knowing smile and says, “Slowly and one more time.” Heh, I got it right when I actually read it. Count on me to put a smile on everyone’s face.
Day 2 - Test of Patience
License Fee (P180)
Revision of Records (P30)
Computer Fee (P53.76)
Total for Day 2 (P263.76)
Got there early at 8.15am for the pre-evaluation, hoping that everything would zoom through faster than I can say “Chiktikah-fast-paws.” It looked good when they got my signature and picture taken within 15 minutes. However, everything was downhill from there. The next step - Cashier - took an hour. The final step - Releasing - then ate up 2 hours of my abundant time.
My Own Licensing Center
While waiting, I brainstormed for ideas on how to run my own licensing center. I’d wager it would:
- Have a better Public Announcement System so that one won’t worry about missing their call.
- Have more than one fan at the waiting area. They’re not going to be stand fans but ceiling fans.
- There will be windows to keep fresh air in circulation.
It’s not going to be an assembly-type transaction center too. This window, that window, crap that. I noticed that the people at LTO changed places every once in a while. This means that everyone’s a generalist and can actually take care of an entire transaction without the lengthy wait times during hand-offs. However, to make this a fair comment, I’ve thought of rebuttals against my stance:
- Theory A - specializing makes work on each node efficient. I haven’t been around enough to see the entirety of LTO’s operations. Maybe they’ve tried it before and it sucked, but then again, maybe they haven’t.
- Security concern about the decentralization of powers over so many people. Different people must be in charge of the different responsibilities in a system to avoid corruption. If nobody gets to overlook the progress of work in a system, this might lead to corruption. In addition, allowing a lot of people to access certain resources in the system (such as cashier register) is a big vulnerability spelled in all caps.
So, if I can’t have my home-run-all-the-way transactional setup, then we’ll have to do something to make things better or at least bearable:
A ticker to show application progress. Not only will it show the progress of one’s application, it will also give people an estimate of how much they still have to wait ~ allowing them to do other things or minimize boredom plain and simple.
A ticketing system just like what they have in banks where you get a stub once you get in and wait for your number to be called. One gets idea right away of how deep they are in the queue or how far they are from the end of the tunnel.
Online application and the option to pay elsewhere such as 7-11s, banks, gasoline stations or wherever can greatly decrease bottlenecks inside LTO by the case.
Of course my registration system will be fast and expensive. There’s nothing free in life and nothing expensive should be of low quality. This is not what I see happening though, but this is what I see should be happening since not all expensive stuff are high quality stuff. In this democratic and capitalist nation, one should always get what they pay for.
It will also have service level agreements (SLAs) with hardware and software solution providers.
Since LTO is one of the government’s main functions, it would be cool if they could rig the business permits of the solution providers to the Quality of Service (QoS) they provide. If this were the case, then our telecommunications industry would be a lot better, not just flashier.
Hardware maintenance will also be implemented. At the first sign of distress, corrective maintenance will pull out and replace a non-working equipment so that hardware failures are handled gracefully and transparently from the customers. However, preventive maintenance is better than reactive, so technicians should perform regular visits to the sites to make sure everything is well-oiled and running as it should be.
The entire process took me two trips to San Juan and five hours of waiting spread over two days. The system works, but it can be improved. Most filipinos say there’s a lot of potential in the Philippines. That’s true. However, I’d love to see that optimism put into concrete plans of action and solid actions which we dreaming lot of Filipinos lack.
It’s no longer the 18th century where we have Foreigners telling us what to do. Time to scrap that old perspective of us waiting on others to tell us what to do. Time to show them our bayags. Time to have a better LTO Licensing Center. Time to have my own Licensing Center.