Senator Richard Gordon reiterated on Monday that the Motorcycle Crime Prevention Law will protect the public from crimes committed using motorcycles and will help secure the motorcycle owners and riders from being victimized and used by criminals for illegal and brutal acts.
Gordon, author of Republic Act No. 11235, pointed out that the number of people being killed by riding-in-tandem assassins in the Philippines continues to rise, hence, there is an urgent need for the implementation of the measure.
Based on the monitoring of his office, he said, there have been 147 victims of motorcycle-riding gunmen reported in the news from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2020, while there have been eight victims from Jan. 1 to 16 this year.
“These assassins continue to terrorize the country and people are being murdered just like that even at this time of a pandemic. The continuous and unabated killings are increasingly alarming. Masyado nang talamak ang mga patayan (Killings are rampant),” Gordon said in a news release on Tuesday.
R.A. 11235 mandates the use of bigger, readable, and color-coded plates so that motorcycles used in crimes can be easily identified and the use of stolen number plates can be prevented, as well.
The old plate measures 200mm x 225mm, while the new plate measures 235mm in width and 135mm in height.
The law also requires the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to maintain a registry of motorcycles to facilitate information retrieval for official investigation and law enforcement purposes.
“Pakikiusapan natin ang LTO para lumabas na ‘yung kanilang mga computer at ma-implement kaagad ‘yung bagong plaka. Hindi naman malaki ‘yung plaka; pinagkumpara ko ‘yung dati sa bago para makita ang sukat (We will appeal to LTO so that their computers will be released and implement the new plates. It is not too big. I compared it to the old plate to know the size),” Gordon said.
On No. 20, 2020, LTO chief Assistant Secretary Edgar Galvante said in a letter addressed to Senate President Vicente Sotto III that their target for the full delivery of the 13-million backlog in motorcycle plates is May 2022, while the LTO Central Command Center (C3) is targeted to be operational by April this year.
However, during the budget hearing last November, Gordon told the LTO to commit for the completion of the operations center by February 2021.