According to an official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the media, the department has decided not to order new plates until the changes are finalised. It had earlier placed an order for 250,000 plates. The next order was to be placed this week starting from September 22. The department has a backlog of three million plates. It had stopped issuing number plates for motorcycles in February 2012 and for cars in March 2013. It stopped accepting payments for new plates in May, 2013.
Four meetings, presided over by the excise and taxation minister, have been held so far to decide the fees and the new design.
Earlier this year, the department had signed a contract with a private company, Inbox, for supplying the plates for three years.
The company has established a facility to prepare some 500,000 number plates per month.
According to the department official, several designs are under consideration.
“One proposal, floated by Deputy Secretary (Technical) Rizwan Akram Sherwani, is to use three alphabets and three digits on the number plate without mentioning the year. This can generate 101 million unique numbers. The current pattern can only produce a million plates per year,” he said.
The official said the fee was also going to be revised.
“Earlier the department was charging Rs1,000 for number plates for cars and commercial vehicles, and Rs400 from bikes and Rs450 from rickshaws. The actual cost of number plates was Rs712 for cars and commercial vehicles, Rs456 for bikes and Rs542 for rickshaws. The Excise and Taxation minister chaired a meeting in this regard on September 18,” the official said.
He said that the department on September 20 proposed Rs1,050 for cars, Rs1,070 for commercial vehicles and Rs720 for bikes and Rs750 for rickshaws.
He said the proposal had been sent to the secretary for final approval.
Talking to The Express Tribune, Excise and Taxation Secretary Khalid Masud Chaudhry said that change in the design of number plates was under consideration.
“However, nothing has been finalised yet. In reviewing the design, we will keep the contract with Inbox in mind. The change can be as little as increasing the font size of year as it is not clearly visible in the current plate,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 22nd, 2014.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ