Complaints dismissed as ‘fallacious’

Fact-finding body ‘investigates matter thoroughly’

LAHORE:

The matter of issuing fake e-challans as well as unofficial challans across Punjab has come to the notice of the traffic police highups.

A circular was issued to all the chief traffic officers, District Police Officers and District Traffic Officers by the SSP of Headquarters, Rafat Haider Bukhari, which said that the matter of issuing of fake traffic e-challans had come to light across Punjab. Questions were also being raised why field officers issued manual challans instead of automatic digital challans.

Following the issuance of the circular, the Chief Traffic Officer of Lahore, Mustansar Feroze, formed a fact-finding committee. The team completed all its investigations in light of the circular.

Mustansar Feroze explained to The Express Tribune how the digital challaning system worked. He said that the e-challans were issued by the Punjab Safe City Authority which detected traffic rule violations with the help of the cameras. He said that challans were sent directly to the vehicle owners who violated the traffic rules.

Mustansar Feroze said that vehicle owners could also check the challan by registering their vehicle’s number with the Punjab Safe City Authority website. The challan amount was deposited by the vehicle owner themselves at a bank branch, and the complaints of e-challan being fake were untrue.

Chief Traffic Officer Mustansar Feroze said about digital challaning that traffic police used the challan book rarely. A spokesman for the Traffic Police, Rana Arif, said that police had caught some rogue drivers who allegedly used fraudulent means to avoid paying the challan money. Rana Arif said that 17 cases of fraud against such drivers had been registered so far this month.

Traffic police also received some complaints alleging that the traffic wardens entered the PS ID Code on unofficial paper. When an enquiry was conducted in this matter, it emerged that messages from 8070 could not be sent to those drivers who did not have a mobile phone or an internet service.

However, the PS ID Code was generated when challan was issued. In such a case, the warden wrote the code on a plain paper to those drivers so that the amount of the challan could be paid through an online cash payment service.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2023.