The local office of the Land Transportation Office (LTO), stung by unceasing public tirades over alleged red tape and corruption is now adopting measures to cut transaction time by 50%.

LTO – Tagbilaran City District Office Registrar Erwin Patallinghug told DYRD “Inyong Alagad” that a request for police presence in the LTO premises has been sent to the Tagbilaran City Police Station to deter fixers from plying their trade.

Patalinghug assured the public that next month processing for the renewal of licenses and applications for new licenses will be trimmed down to half of the time clients are presently enduring in their office.

Patalinghug also vowed to tackle the problem of office equipment break-down which he blamed for delays and additional burdens encountered by the public.

However, Patalinghug downplayed the issue of lack of personnel saying that “as long as there is no break down of our computers and our connections will not suffer any “off line” situation, we can handle the volume of our daily transactions”.

But a bemused public gave Patalinghug a drubbing upon hearing of his promise to cut down on red tape wondering why these measures were not taken long before.

The commitment by Patalinghug came amid his denials that so called “in house fixers” are now taking over the operations of the traditional fixers who have shied away from their once lucrative racket of brokering transactions between clients and the LTO for a fee.

Fixers prefers to be called “facilitators” after their operations were limited to steering clients to their favored drug testing centers, medical clinics, insurance companies and smoke emission testing for a “referral fee” of P100.00/office or a minimum of P400/client, according to an insider.

While the LTO rhetoric on the cutting down on red tape sounds good, sources told the Chronicle that on closer look, this is only a smokescreen for the agency’s reputation of corruption and ineptitude in public service. (Chito M. Visarra)