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200,000 citizens awaiting driving licence as govt runs out of smart cards

File image: A queue for driving licences at the Transport Management Office in Ekantakuna.

Kathmandu, November 27

The government has not been able to smoothly distribute driving licences for last few months. Currently, 200,000 applications have piled up at the Department of Transport Management.

The Department, however, has just 15,000 blank smart cards to print driving licences in its current stock. Consequently, an applicant has to wait for as long as 10 months to receive the licence after filing the application.

“It is an extreme of lack of system,” an applicant Jeevan Lama from Hetaunda says, “Citizens should have received the licence in a single day. It is a crime that they are making us wait for months.”

The Department says around 5,000 people apply for licence every day, but it is struggling to print just around 500 licences.

While the Department has run out of cards, it does not have efficient printing machines either. One of four machines has already run kaput. Though the Department has begun distributing smart licences from all of its offices across the country, printing is done only at its Minbhawan-based central office.

The Department’s Director General, Rup Narayan Bhattarai, however, says the problem will get solved very soon as an Indian company, Madras Security Printers, has been assigned to supply 750,000 smart cards. He claims around 100,000 cards will be delivered within few weeks.

“If the company fails to supply the cards on time,” he says, “We are sensitive that the problem should not get prolonged.”

 

 

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