Yellow Cab Scheme: Only 10 per cent of trained cab drivers get cars
Punjab govt still optimistic that all 20,000 cabs will be delivered by June.
LAHORE:
Almost 9,000 people have been trained to drive taxis but just 900 had received vehicles by the end of 2011 under the Yellow Cab Scheme, the Punjab government’s flagship job creation programme.
The Punjab government had previously said it aimed to deliver 7,500 cabs to successful applicants by the end of the year. The delivery of vehicles has been slow mainly because of the failure of many candidates to provide the required documentation and the slow process of verification, said officials from various departments that spoke to The Express Tribune.
One official also blamed a lack of leadership: “No one is taking responsibility to improve the mechanism and ensure timely delivery of vehicles,” he said. The Planning and Development Board was recently tasked with speeding up the process.
The government allocated Rs4.5 billion in the 2011-12 budget to launch the scheme, under which unemployed youths would get 12,000 Suzuki Mehrans and 8,000 Suzuki Bolans to drive as taxis.
More than 50,000 people applied for subsidised vehicles under the programme and 20,000 were selected at the end of September by a ballot conducted by the Bank of Punjab (BoP) with technical support from the Punjab Information Technology Board.
The Transport Department then launched a mandatory 15-day training programme for the grant of public service vehicle licences to the drivers, while district coordination officers (DCOs) were tasked with verifying the applicants’ credentials. The winners were required to make a 20 per cent advanced payment on the cab to the Bank of Punjab.
The DCOs found that some 40 per cent of the applicants had provided incorrect driving licences, domiciles and age certificates, while many were bank defaulters. As the verification process threw a spanner in the delivery schedule, driver training continued and some 9,000 had completed their courses by the end of December.
Meanwhile the manufacturer also failed to meet the delivery order for 7,500 vehicles by the end of December, delivering only 3,500. Nine hundred of these have been sent to the candidates certified by the district governments as genuine.
The chief minister recently appointed Senator Muhammad Ishaq Dar to supervise the scheme and ensure all bottlenecks faced by the departments concerned are quickly removed.
“The Transport Department does not have the capacity to meet the desired targets and therefore it was decided that the Planning and Development Board would handle it,” said an official.
A senior Transport Department official said that the government had fallen behind schedule in the scheme because of multiple reasons, including the “lacklustre attitude” of DCOs.
A DCO said the district government had many responsibilities and they could not move any faster on the verification of credentials. “The scheme was not planned very well,” he said.
Punjab government spokesman Senator Pervaiz Rasheed said the process was slow owing to the “lazy response” of applicants in submitting the required documents. The cabs would be delivered after the submission and verification of all documents, a process being handled by the Bank of Punjab, he said. He added that the government was optimistic that all the cabs would be delivered by June.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2012.
Almost 9,000 people have been trained to drive taxis but just 900 had received vehicles by the end of 2011 under the Yellow Cab Scheme, the Punjab government’s flagship job creation programme.
The Punjab government had previously said it aimed to deliver 7,500 cabs to successful applicants by the end of the year. The delivery of vehicles has been slow mainly because of the failure of many candidates to provide the required documentation and the slow process of verification, said officials from various departments that spoke to The Express Tribune.
One official also blamed a lack of leadership: “No one is taking responsibility to improve the mechanism and ensure timely delivery of vehicles,” he said. The Planning and Development Board was recently tasked with speeding up the process.
The government allocated Rs4.5 billion in the 2011-12 budget to launch the scheme, under which unemployed youths would get 12,000 Suzuki Mehrans and 8,000 Suzuki Bolans to drive as taxis.
More than 50,000 people applied for subsidised vehicles under the programme and 20,000 were selected at the end of September by a ballot conducted by the Bank of Punjab (BoP) with technical support from the Punjab Information Technology Board.
The Transport Department then launched a mandatory 15-day training programme for the grant of public service vehicle licences to the drivers, while district coordination officers (DCOs) were tasked with verifying the applicants’ credentials. The winners were required to make a 20 per cent advanced payment on the cab to the Bank of Punjab.
The DCOs found that some 40 per cent of the applicants had provided incorrect driving licences, domiciles and age certificates, while many were bank defaulters. As the verification process threw a spanner in the delivery schedule, driver training continued and some 9,000 had completed their courses by the end of December.
Meanwhile the manufacturer also failed to meet the delivery order for 7,500 vehicles by the end of December, delivering only 3,500. Nine hundred of these have been sent to the candidates certified by the district governments as genuine.
The chief minister recently appointed Senator Muhammad Ishaq Dar to supervise the scheme and ensure all bottlenecks faced by the departments concerned are quickly removed.
“The Transport Department does not have the capacity to meet the desired targets and therefore it was decided that the Planning and Development Board would handle it,” said an official.
A senior Transport Department official said that the government had fallen behind schedule in the scheme because of multiple reasons, including the “lacklustre attitude” of DCOs.
A DCO said the district government had many responsibilities and they could not move any faster on the verification of credentials. “The scheme was not planned very well,” he said.
Punjab government spokesman Senator Pervaiz Rasheed said the process was slow owing to the “lazy response” of applicants in submitting the required documents. The cabs would be delivered after the submission and verification of all documents, a process being handled by the Bank of Punjab, he said. He added that the government was optimistic that all the cabs would be delivered by June.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2012.