Govind Sharma
JAMMU, Mar 10: Thousands of applicants in Jammu and Kashmir have been waiting for last about three months to get their permanent driving licenses from Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) due to non-availability of printing material including smartcards, coloured films, etc.
Rajeshwar Kumar, a University student said that he visited RTO Jammu yesterday for the third time in the past two months to know the status of his permanent driving license (DL) smart card but every time he was told to wait for few days. He is among over 16,000 applicants waiting for their permanent license from RTO Jammu for the past two to three months.
The reason for the delay being the shortage of printing material including smart cards and coloured films required to print permanent licenses. The situation is so bad that daily, there are long queues of people at the RTO office arguing and fighting with the RTO staffers to get their driving licenses.
The situation is no different in most of the RTOs operating in the Union Territory as customers have been waiting for their DL smartcards for the last 2-3 months. It is learnt that around 16000-17000 DL smart cards are pending to print in RTO Jammu but they have no plain smart cards and films required for printing the licenses.
According to the rules, DL smart cards are dispatched within a fortnight but now due to shortage of printing material, customers have been waiting for months together to get the same. Vikrant Gupta of Gandhi Nagar said he had cleared the driving license test but even after two months, he had not received his DL smart card. He said on enquiring from the officials it was found that they had not yet got the smart cards and other printing material from the Transport Department.
As per official sources, the printing material including smartcards and coloured films are provided to the RTOs working in the UT by the Transport Department. They said Transport Department issues tenders every year for supply of printing material. “The printing material supplied to RTOs last year have been consumed completely and for last two three months, most of RTOs are facing acute shortage of printing material including smart cards,” they added.
Sources said such a situation has arisen due to delay in tendering for printing material by the Transport Department due to non-availability of funds as Finance Department failed to provide the Transport Department required funds for tendering.
However, Assistant Regional Transport Officer (ARTO) Jammu, Mohd Saleem when contacted, informed that the Transport Department has done tendering for the required printing material on March 6 and they are hopeful of getting the printing material including smart cards within a week or two. He said once smart cards and coloured films are provided to them, all backlog would be cleared within a couple of days.
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