Vehicle fitness certificate: How fit is your bus?

By law, every public transport automobile has to carry a fitness certificate, updated every six months.

PESHAWAR:

For people travelling in public transport in the city and elsewhere in the province, there are problems aplenty. But the most dangerous one is invisible to the naked eye; the lack of vehicle fitness certification.

There is no straight line to point a finger at. Both drivers of the vehicles and the transport department claim the problem lies on the other side while in reality both are responsible. Vehicle drivers are either not aware of the requirement to have a fitness check done or wilfully avoid the ‘hassle’. The department lacks the necessary machines to give a bus or a wagon a clean bill of health after a thorough analysis.

By law, known to some but not all, it is mandatory for all public transport carriers to get their vehicles’ fitness certification every six months. This is meant to ensure each part of the said vehicle fulfils the safety and regulatory requirements to run on the roads. These regulations are meant to ensure major accidents do not take place as a result of vehicle malfunction. In part, these checks also make sure the buses or vans are environment friendly.

According to an official in the Regional Transport Authority (RTA), only 5% bring their automobiles in to get fitness certificates.

Unfortunately, the RTA does not even have sufficient tech to check the 5% which do come in.



“There are no enforcement laws to bring vehicles without fitness certificates in forcefully. We manually push the brake, we check how much smoke is emitted by pushing the accelerator and then check the overall condition of the vehicle,” said the official on the condition of anonymity.

According to the official, an “analyser machine” is needed for accurate information about each part of a vehicle. Unfortunately, the RTA does not have the said machine to issue fitness certificates.

It costs Rs200 to issue the document for heavy vehicles and Rs100 for light vehicles.

A driver at the general bus stand, Umer Khan, said there was no mass campaign to make sure each vehicle carried the fitness certificates. He pointed out if anyone needed this document, it was just a matter of bribing an official and the certificate would be issued in half an hour.

“The traffic police hardly ask us to provide the fitness certificate and most of the drivers do not know about it. There is no punishment for not obtaining it. Most of the vehicles on GT Road are not fit to be used for passengers because they are old and have been repaired one too many times,” retorted Umer.

On the other hand, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Directorate of Transport claimed it had achieved major success in the past years as many outdated vehicles have been fined for not fulfilling the requirement.

Motor Vehicle Examiner Malik Mudasir said the directorate issued fitness certificates to 8,000 vehicles in January, 5,400 in February, 5,200 in March and 7,000 in April across the province.

He also claimed they charged 800 vehicles just in Peshawar during last month for not possessing fitness certificates.

However, Transport Directorate Director Manzoor Ahmad maintained there was lack of coordination between their department and the traffic police which prevented any large-scale drive to impound vehicles breaking this particular safety law.

“We are going to install analyser machines in the district transport office for issuing fitness certificates; it will be the only one in the county. We have been planning to get the machine for the last one year but there were some problems delaying its installation.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2013.