Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 26) — The Department of Transportation (DOTr) has launched a website to help car owners track their new vehicle plates and address the problem of over a million unclaimed replacement plates.
“We prepared a [website] that can be accessed by those who have not received the replacement plates and by just inputting their plate number malalaman nila kung nasaan s’ya (they will know where it is),” Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista told CNN Philippines’ The Source on Wednesday.
The website can be accessed through https://ltoplatereplacement.com/.
Earlier, the Commission on Audit (COA) reported that 1.79 million pairs of license plates worth over ₱800 million remain unclaimed at the Land Transportation Office (LTO). These replacement plates were already paid for by car owners upon their renewal of vehicle registration.
The COA noted that of the remaining 2,561,629 pairs of replacement plates, LTO produced only 764,514 pairs as of end-2022. Of the manufactured plates, only 506,059 pairs were released to various regional offices while the remaining ones are still with the LTO’s Plate Making Plant.
Bautista said one of the reasons why the plates are still unclaimed is because the owners are not notified that these are already available.
Since these are only replacement plates, some vehicle owners did not feel the urgency of claiming theirs because they still have their old plates, he added.
According to Bautista, the DOTr has completed uploading information of some areas, including the National Capital Region-East, Caraga, and the Cordillera Administrative Region.
The DOTr aims to complete uploading information of all 1.7 million license plates in a month.
