Vehicle registration: Govt goes into overdrive to provide pending smart cards

Manufacturer to print 170,000 more such cards on emergency basis

LAHORE: To counter growing frustration among car owners awaiting smart registration cards, the provincial government has decided to take emergency measures to facilitate citizens.

For several months, Punjab’s motorists have not been provided smart registration cards against their applications due to a supply shortage. The Express Tribune learnt that the company responsible for manufacturing the registration cards procured a large volume of printing and manufacturing material from the United States and China. This development took place after instructions from the minister and secretary of excise and taxation to expedite the process. Per reports, the procured material is enough to manufacture two million registration cards.

The excise and taxation department has instructed the card-printing company to expedite the printing of 700,000 cards which have been pending for months. The company has been advised to run its machines round-the-clock rather than the usual 16 hours so that the pending assignment could be completed in the next five weeks.

Sources say that a special paper has arrived in Lahore from the United States, adding that around 170,000 pending cards will be prepared on an emergency basis and handed over to car owners within the next two days after lamination work.

Punjab faces crisis of computerised number plates for vehicles

Meanwhile, citizens and car dealers are reporting extreme difficulties due to the unavailability of vehicle registration cards. Meanwhile, the excise and taxation department is also facing a revenue shortfall, amounting to millions of rupees, as it has over 200,000 pending applications requesting the transfer of ownership.

The excise department started its drive to produce smart registration cards for vehicles on December 22, 2018.  So far, only 880,000 cards have been issued, while 700,000 paid applications still haven’t been processed due to various reasons. Sources say that issues related to payment, custom clearance and change in banking rules regarding the letter of credit for imported vehicles has resulted in printing delays.

Excise department officials add that the card-printing company could not be paid for their services on time as some departmental rules had to first be amended. The amount that the company had to be paid in January was handed over in June by the excise department. As a result, the delay in payments prompted the company to defer the import of raw materials from abroad.

Blank cards with a near-field communication (NFC) chips are imported from China, while a special lamination paper is brought in from the United States. The lamination provides increased security and preserves the registration card’s impressions, holographic colours and the logo of the Punjab government.

Details also revealed that the daily production capacity of the card-printing company is 20,000 cards, but the manufacturing facility is currently producing only 14,000 cards per day due to technical glitches and a lack of manpower.

Taking note of the issue, the excise department has advised company officials to start three shifts a day and expedite the printing of 700,000 cards within the next 35 days. Most of the applications for registration cards were submitted from Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, making a total of around 400,000 applications. On the other hand, 170,000 of these cards are in process and are awaiting lamination for the past several weeks.

The non-registration fiasco has heavily affected the business of car dealers, while citizens are also frustrated over not receiving their registration documents even after having paid the necessary fee and excise duties.

According to an estimate, over 200,000 applications are still pending with the excise department due to which the government is deprived of revenue amounting to millions of rupees.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4^th, 2019.