LTO urged to check alleged conflict of interest of some PETCs

MANILA, Philippines – The Association of Private Emission Testing Center (PETC) Owners for Environmental Protection (APOEP) issued a call for the new administration at the Land Transportation Office to investigate the reported conflict of interest of certain private emission testing centers and the four PETC-IT providers operating at the LTO.

Macario Evangelista, APOEP president, urged LTO chief, Assistant Secretary Virgie Torres, to look into the unfair treatment suffered by other PETCs from PETC-IT providers with certain PETCs getting favorable upload and turnaround time from the IT providers, thus making it grossly unfair for other PETCs to conduct their operations.

According to APOEP, the credibility of the private emission testing system of motor vehicles is clearly at risk because of the clear conflict of interest involved in the ownership of emission testing centers by the PETC-IT providers. This was even admitted by the spokesperson of the PETC-IT providers, lawyer Dan Barrameda of RDMS, who himself admitted that it is true that some of the PETCs are owned and operated by the PETC-IT providers.

“This is a critical problem that threatens the credibility and effectiveness of the entire emission testing system. The main problem with PETC-IT providers owning PETCs is that other PETCs not owned by them suffer biased treatment and are unable to effectively perform their functions,” said Evangelista. He said that they have been getting complaints from many small PETCs operating in the country where they are being discriminated against by the bigger PETCs owned by the PETC-IT providers. 

The PETC-IT providers had earlier brushed off the allegation of conflict of interest, saying that Evangelista’s group was made up of PETCs that were found to be engaged in “non-appearance” cases, which caused them from being barred to connect with the LTO system and uplaod their data. The PETC-IT providers are the ones that upload the emission test information of a vehicle into the LTO-IT system. The problem experienced by the many smaller PETCs is that they get unfavorable and slow response time from the IT providers while the bigger PETCs owned by them get a faster turnaround time,” APOEP said.