Philippines Drivers License Issue

So, the Cagayan de Oro Philippine Eagles Club has a joint exercise today with the LTO, starting at 1:30, to do emissions testing of vehicles. As a member of the Eagles, I wanted to participate or at least observe what was happening.

I needed a new Philippines Drivers License, because mine had been damaged. This is what it looked like when it was a few months old and I scanned it.

This is what it looks like now, and the reason I decided to go to the LTO (Land Transportation Office, which issues Drivers licenses and is also a branch of law enforcement), to get a new license.

After finding the proper window to go to, I showed the woman my license, and asked her if I could have it replaced. She says, “do you have the original receipt?”.

“No”, I say, “I have the actual license you gave me one year ago, you have it in your hand, what do I need a receipt for?”

“Sir, I cannot replace your drivers license if you do not have your original receipt”, she tells me. She’s holding the actual drivers license in her hand. All she has to do is go into the computer, and find the drivers license file that was printed out one year before, and simply re-print it. If the file is in the computer she knows it is real, what do I need a receipt for?

Then it dawns on me that ID piracy, illegal ID production is probably rampant in The Philippines. There is a place on each city block with a sign that says “Instant IDs”, or “IDs while you wait”, or something to that effect. These ID places are about 15% as common as internet cafes (which are all over the place).

So, now the woman is basically accusing me of fraud, which really pisses me off, but I try to control myself, because I also realize she is only following standard operating procedures (SOP).

I dig through my wallet and fortunately find the original receipt for the Drivers License. (I had heard that when driving around the Philippines and crossing from island to island with a vehicle on the RORO (Roll On Roll Off) ferries, that they will often not only ask for your drivers license but ask for your original receipt also (which is probably just a scam to get a little kickback to ignore the fact that you don’t have your original drivers license receipt, which is probably not a requirement anyway. If you produced your original receipt they’d probably ask for your birth certificate next…it’s always something.))

So, now the lady has my Philippines Drivers license in her hand, and she is holding the Original Receipt for same, and then she says, “Sir, do you have any valid ID?”

I think she could actually hear my jaw hit the floor. Some explicatives escaped me at this time. Anger Management 101, take a deep breath…

“Look, lady, you are holding in your hand a valid ID and I have proved it is real by showing you the original receipt for it. Why do you need to see another ID?”

In Florida, this would never ever happen. The people at the Drivers Licenses Departments there are trained to recognize a valid drivers license. Upon inspection and verifying that it was real, they would never ask for your receipt. The fact that you have the card is proof that you paid for it. And they would never ask to see another ID, as you’ve already presented a valid ID.

So, I pull out my Eagles ID, my PPSA ID, my gun club ID, my firearm license card, my permit to carry card, and a couple of law enforcement related ID cards, and she tells me these are not good enough. So I showed her my Florida Drivers license. Hmmm, not got enough, “I need to see your passport”. Why couldn’t she just have asked for my passport to start with instead of asking for any other valid ID. She had a stack of 10 valid IDs in front of her. I think she suspected I did not have my passport with me, and usually I don’t, but today I did, so I took it out.

She stacked up all my IDs and paper work and handed them to me and told me to wait for 30 minutes for Door 5. Probably could have just slipped her 500 pesos at the beginning of the session and would have been cleared on through.

So, one of my Eagles Kuyas is the supervisor that works in the office of “Door 5″ sees me there waiting outside the office, and we greeted each other as kuyas do, and I showed him the damaged license and the trama I had just been through, and he pulled out a form and said , “just fill this out”, make photo copies of whatever other IDs you have and bring them back in a couple of weeks when we have the printer back online. We can no more produce these drivers licenses because, the printer is broken and we are waiting for a replacement from Manila..

How long will that take? I asked.

Might be a few weeks, he responded.  I’ll just ask him at the next Eagles meeting if the printer has been fixed  before heading out there.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Cagayan de Oro, Philippines Driving, Philippines Eagles, Philippines Expat Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.