Capital to get e-tags to combat car theft
Teams of the excise and taxation department in Islamabad have seized four stolen vehicles and handed them over to the Rawalpindi police for processing before returning to their real owners.
The stolen vehicles were seized when they were brought to the excise office for registration, Excise Director Bilal Azam told APP on Thursday, adding that they will introduce e-tags to help end the practice.
While checking the records and conducting a physical examination, it was discovered that the vehicles had been stolen after which the police were notified, he added.
The excise official further said that a few months ago, the department had recovered around 18 vehicles where their physical inspection had disclosed that their chassis number had been tampered with and that the original numbers belonged to vehicles which had been reported as stolen with various police stations in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
To a query, he said that the department has decided to issue unique e-tags for every vehicle to minimize car thefts in the federal capital. Each e-tag, he explained, will carry a coded identification number that the driver can paste on the windscreen or number plate of the vehicle, Azam added.
Car thieves arrested, five vehicles recovered
The exact identification number of the vehicle will be stored in the excise department's database and will be synced with the identification number on the e-tag.
The e-tags, he said, will assist the department in identifying and searching for stolen cars with the help of a Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID).
The department has taken several steps to digitise services in recent months under the Digital Pakistan initiative to facilitate customers.
A few months ago, at the height of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the department had introduced an app for residents of the federal capital to register, transfer their vehicles and pay tax from their homes because the offices of the department had restricted entry of citizens in line with standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the virus.
Meanwhile, the excise director said he has held meetings with representatives of local auto manufacturers and some foreign companies who assemble vehicles locally such as Toyota, Honda and Suzuki, to address the issues of vehicle owners.
It was decided that residents of the city can get new vehicles registered within showrooms through a special mechanism even before the vehicle is driven.
"It will make buying vehicles easier for citizens as there will be no need to come to the excise office to get the vehicle registered," the director remarked. The department, Azam said, receives on average around 200 applications for registration of new vehicles daily.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 4th, 2020.