Land Transportation Office (LTO) Chief Markus Lacanilao last week ordered concerned offices to immediately stop using the agency’s old STRADCOM IT system and transition to the exclusive use of the Land Transportation Management System (LTMS).

The directive follows an order from the Office of the Ombudsman requiring the LTO to stop using the legacy STRADCOM system and process all official transactions through the LTMS. Under Memorandum Nos. MVL-2026-207 and MVL-2026-208, the agency ordered the immediate termination of STRADCOM at Enhanced Driver’s License System (EDLS) pilot sites and 42 designated Temporary Offsite Printing Offices (TOPOs).

What does this mean to the motoring public?

For motorists, one immediate change is the removal of the computer fee previously charged for transactions processed through STRADCOM. LTO leadership confirmed to AutoIndustriya.com that the PHP 169.06 fee will no longer be collected now that the agency is moving away from the old system.

The fee had been charged to motorists and other LTO clients for transactions processed using the STRADCOM-operated IT system.

The shift should also address another problem caused by the parallel use of STRADCOM and LTMS, which is the “automatic” late registration fees.

In many cases, a vehicle’s registration renewal record uploaded to STRADCOM in one year did not appear in LTMS the following year. When the motorist returned to renew the registration, the LTMS had no record of the previous transaction and treated the vehicle as overdue, resulting in the automatic imposition of late registration fees.

With STRADCOM being phased out and transactions consolidated under LTMS, the agency can now maintain registration records within a single system.

PHP 28.56 billion in fees sought refunded

The end of the computer fee comes as Coalition 169 pushes for the review and possible refund or restitution of billions of pesos collected from LTO clients. In August, the group launched its “Refund 169” campaign, calling for a legal review of the computer fees collected by the agency.

According to Coalition 169’s estimates, around PHP 28.56 billion in computer fees had been collected from motorists and other LTO clients from February 2013 to the present through the STRADCOM-operated LTO IT system.