My first time to renew my driver’s license at this unit., and it was truly disappointing. At the Makati LTO where I usually go, it takes less than an hour in a clean and well allotted space. The one in Ayala is small and cramped, housed in a poorly maintained MRT station, dirty stairs, escalator didn’t work. It didn’t feel like a station in a prime district of a metropolis. We’ll tackle that in another post.

To be fair, there was a high amount of applicants that day. But there was something wrong with the process. For one, I don’t know why there were 2 photo-taking sessions for each applicant,  first picture taken when they process your application, then another one before releasing your license.  This is insane!  No wonder the process time was so long.

Next,  maybe due to a lot of netizens complaining online on why government employees have a penchant of accumulating bundles of documents before they process the papers,  while we poor people sit and sweat,  this unit made it a point not to do this “bundling”.  But what I saw was even more infuriating.  There was a stack of documents to be processed for releasing,  where they took  another picture, got your fingerprints, and input all your details in some form ( which in other centers were done all in one step). The persons doing this step went to the stack of documents, and picked one document at a time, going back and forth.  This definitely dragged the whole process down.

In the Makati LTO office,  people were called out as a group and they stood by as others had their pictures taken.  When they finished one, another was sat down immediately, eliminating seconds and minutes of waiting for the next person to be processed.  The Ayala LTO unit on the other hand, called each person one by one. UGH!  It felt like they deliberately bogged down the process! No, no one was going home after an hour here, we enjoy the overflowing office, the long lines, and looking back at the frustrated faces of people.  That’s what it felt like.

This LTO unit should be held as an example as how not to run a license processing center.