Senate bears down on LTO IT firm

THE Senate Blue Ribbon Committee has compelled the representatives of Dermalog Identification Systems, the Land Transportation Office’s foreign information technology contractor, to attend the next public hearing to answer the lingering issues hounding the Land Transportation Management System (LTMS), including delays and alleged undue payments.

During a hearing presided over by Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Sen. Francis Tolentino on June 8, several senators were appalled by the absence of Dermalog officials, who were said to be in Germany, according to the company’s legal counsel.

Public Services Committee chairman

Sen. Grace Poe and Sen. JV Ejercito said they could not gather sufficient information on the issues regarding LTO’s IT platform. Poe added that the hearing could have given Dermalog a chance to clear its reputation amid earlier media reports that aside from the LTMS, some of its projects in Indonesia, Angola, and Haiti also faced irregularities. The hearing stemmed from two sepa- rate resolutions filed by Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel and Sen. Imee Marcos in August 2022 and December 2022, respectively.

Pimentel, in his Senate Resolution No. 147, which was based on a Commission on Audit (COA) report, questioned LTO’s alleged undue payment to Dermalog and its joint venture with Holy Family Printing Corp., Microgenesis, and Verzontal Builders, Inc., despite the foreign IT firm’s delays in fully submitting the deliverables of the P3.14 billion Road IT Infrastructure project that was awarded in May 2018.

Pimentel revealed that despite having more than 70 unresolved issues involving the core applications of the LTMS, the LTO has accepted the submission of Dermalog and provided payments to them.

In addition, a COA representative revealed to the Committee that the LTO started paying maintenance fees to the foreign IT company in 2019, even before the project was fully completed and turned over.

For his part, Ejercito questioned LTO for being overly “generous” by amending the payment scheme at least 12 times in favor of Dermalog.

He alleged that the LTO accepted the submission of its foreign IT contractor despite failing to reach at least 41 percent completion. Macon Ramos-Araneta