Techy travelling: Chip-based vehicle registration cards soon

Official says new cards for capital’s drivers will be issued in the first week of May


Obaid Abbasi January 18, 2015
Currently, 0.63 million vehicles are registered with the excise department and the chip-based cards will be issued to all of them. PHOTO: EXPRESS

ISLAMABAD:


Registration papers of all vehicles will now be replaced with chip-based registration cards containing all of the vehicle and driver’s details. This is the first time that a multi-security chip-based vehicle system is being introduced in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).


According to an ICT official, the Excise and Taxation Department will start issuing the chip-based registration cards in the first week of May.

The idea was floated by two officials — Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Mujahid Sherdil and Director Excise and Taxation Noman Yousaf — after working on the project for almost a year.

Under the new system, chip-based cards of the size of the comupterised national identity cards will be issued to vehicle owners which will contain all details, including name of the owner, his identity card and chassis number, etc.

“The basic objective of the project is to convert the decades-old system into a modern one as is practiced internationally,” explained Yousaf.

Currently, 0.63 million vehicles are registered with the excise department and the chip-based cards will be issued to all of them, said the official.

According to him, the Excise and Taxation Department and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) have already signed a memorandum of understanding to start work on the project. The excise department has also transferred details of the registered vehicles to Nadra in this regard, he said.

“The new chip-based cards will be issued to the vehicle owners in the first week of May,” Yousaf said.

He added that the new cards would be easy to carry as compared to the old ones which often go missing or are misplaced by owners. He said that a high number of stolen vehicles are on the roads with fake registration papers and the new system will help overcome this problem.

“In case a card is lost and the vehicle owner reports it, it will be blocked before issuing a new one,” said the official.

Acting Senior Superintendent of Police (Operations) Mirwaiz Khan said that the new system will help overcome the issue of tampering with vehicle registration papers

“It’s a unique initiative by the ICT Administration and it will be more convenient for motorists to keep and carry,” said Fahad Khan Khizri, a resident of Islamabad.

He said that the new system will also discourage touts who demand money from the public to get the registration papers signed and renewed.

Tahir Sohail, another resident, said that the system should have been launched much earlier in the capital as, according to him, the public have to face a lot of problems in the excise department to get and sign the registration papers.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18th, 2015.

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