13,000 await registration plates for new cars

No plates issued for some 10 weeks because of material shortage.

LAHORE:

Owners of new cars have been unable to get registration plates for up to two-and-a-half months and some 13,000 applications have piled up at the Excise and Taxation Department, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Officials at the department estimated that they get about 200 applications for registration plates for new cars every day. The registration window at the department office bears the notice: “For certain reasons, temporarily the number plates are not being distributed. They will be distributed as soon as they came from the factory.”

Fakharul Islam, who is in charge of the Motor Transport Management Information System (MTIMS), told The Express Tribune that there was a shortage of material used in the manufacture of number plates for cars. He said there were no delays in the issuance of motorcycle or rickshaw plates.

Islam suggested that owners of new cars get a special stamped receipt from the department stating that they had applied for registration plates and carry it with them when driving, so they don’t get issued tickets by traffic wardens.

Muhammad Akram, a resident of Garden Town, said that he had been ticketed twice by traffic wardens for driving without a registration plate since he bought his car two months ago.

“This is my fourth visit here,” he told The Tribune at the Excise and Taxation office. “The people here don’t have any information. They don’t even know when the number plates will be delivered exactly. I have faced two challans in this period. The traffic wardens did not listen to me.”

Warden Umair Shehzad said that the traffic police had a responsibility to ensure people followed rules and regulations. If someone had a valid reason for driving without a licence plate, it was up to them to prove it.

“Otherwise the law will take its course. No new car owner has the right to drive without proper number plates,” he said.

The delay has also affected so-called ‘agents’, people who stand in line and wait at the office in place of applicants in exchange for a fee. The practice is illegal but widespread at government offices. An agent complained that his ‘customers’ had been abusing him over the phone, believing that he had pocketed their money since their car plates had not arrived. “Usually you can get the registration plates on the same day you submit the car file,” he said.

Excise and Taxation Director General Dr Muhammad Anwar Rasheed said that the department was expecting delivery of 60,000 number plates for cars within a month. The contractor had told him that there was a shortage of electro-reflective material that is used in the plates, he said.

Rasheed said that they would advertise for a new contractor from today (Tuesday). “We tried to engage a new contractor two months ago but only one party applied for the contract and government rules don’t allow the awarding of a contract when there has only been one bid,” he said.

“The contractor’s contract was valid since last March.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2011.