Islamabad Traffic Police: After two months, license services resume

Services had been stopped after PAC precluded ITP from collecting fees instead of forwarding them to the government.

ISLAMABAD:

After a gap of more than two months, Islamabadis will be able to get new driving licenses.

Inspector General of Police Islamabad Wajid Ali Khan Durrani formally inaugurated the resumption of driving license services here at the Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) headquarters on Saturday.

A new fee structure for different categories of licenses was also introduced.

The services were suspended on January 28 due to financial constraints, after the finance ministry stopped the ITP on the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) insistence from keeping the fees, instead of forwarding them to the government.

The PAC had also directed the finance ministry to allocate appropriate finances so that the ITP could provide these services. It took the ministry more than two months to make the necessary arrangements.

Durrani said they had made “utmost efforts” to streamline the new process to facilitate people. He added that the ITP had carried out an elaborate survey to streamline the new process. The fees, he said, were revised due to surge in raw material prices.

He added that people will be able to deposit the service fees in any branch of the National Bank of Pakistan in Islamabad. The fees will have to be deposited under the relevant head of accounts allocated by the Ministry of Finance, he added. He said they were negotiating with the NBP authorities to open a dedicated fee collection booth within or close to the ITP headquarters.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 03^rd, 2011