Safe City project: Car owners to face the music over traffic violations

As part of the plan, number plates captured by cameras will be used to identify violators

LAHORE: In order to implement newly-introduced legislative reforms under the Transport Sahulat Programme, the Special Monitoring Unit, Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department and Punjab Safe Cities Authority have decided to work in collaboration with each other so that traffic violators could be identified and punished accordingly.

In this regard, a meeting was held the other day at SMU office that was attended by Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control officials and others. On the occasion, SMU officers proposed legal amendments in Punjab Motor Vehicles Ordinance 1965 which allows fines pertaining to traffic violations to be attached to number plates. Camera-integrated fining has been introduced through these legal amendments. These amendments have been passed from Punjab Assembly.



Punjab Safe City Authority will install at least 10,000 CCTV cameras throughout the city under Punjab Police Integrated Command and Control System. The amendments in Motor Vehicle Ordinance paved the way for making Punjab Safe Cities Project more comprehensive and effective. Punjab Safe City Authority, SMU and Excise and Taxation Department have decided to collaborate to use these installed cameras to curb traffic violations.

The number plate captured by PSCA cameras would be used to identify the violator such as the owner of the vehicle. The fine will be associated with the owner of the vehicle. Once cameras captured a violation, it will send the information to traffic police through central command and control system that would post it to owners’ house registered online at the time of buying a vehicle through dealer’s Vehicle Registration System.

To ensure that vehicles in Punjab are registered via the ET&NC department’s official number plates, SMU and ET&NC department have initiated a province-wise crackdown on fabricated/illegal number plates to ensure that only ANPR readable number plates are displayed on vehicles operating in Punjab.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2016.