THE Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) will not pursue its policy against old vehicles instead it will push for road worthiness once the Motor Vehicle Inspection System (MVIS) is fully implemented in the country.
During an interview by reporters on Thursday, February 7, LTFRB chairman Martin Delgra III said that there will be no need to phase out trucks and buses that are more than 15 years old given that their road worthiness will already be determined through passing the MVIS which will be conducted by the Land Transportation Office (LTO).
“The so-called modernization program, walay tarong na MVIS so ang ginabuhat is visual (The so-called modernization program has no proper MVIS since what has been done was only through visual inspection),” Delgra said, adding that the inspection should include all the parts of the vehicles through a computer that would detect its road worthiness, not human visual inspection.
“Ang importante gyud pud is ma-upgrade ang pag-inspect sa road worthiness sa mga sakyanan (What is important is to upgrade the inspection of road worthiness of units) and to do that effectively would be through effective MVIS program,” he added.
Roadworthiness or streetworthiness is the ability of a car, bus, truck or any kind of vehicle to be in a standard operating condition for safe driving.
Following the recent road crashes in the city, Delgra said that the driver's competency is just one aspect of it, and the other one is the road worthiness of units.
“We do regular inspections sa garahe, units. We do that in a regular basis,” Delgra said, however, he added that the human inspection is limited to decide the road worthiness of the units.
Meanwhile, LTFRB reported around 180,000 drivers who availed of the drivers’ academy for driver's competency as of December 2018.
“When we look at driver's training module, we are not only looking at their skills but their consciousness in their responsibility as public utility drivers,” Delgra added.