Daily Times

The Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) has issued around 67,000 tickets to motorists over various traffic rules violations under the capital’s safe city e-challan system, Daily Times has learnt reliably.

As per available information, the ITP issues as many as 1,000 e-tickets on a daily basis. The system was installed almost two years back but remained not fully functional. An official privy to the matter said while wishing anonymity that when traffic violations massively increased, the authorities concerned that are Inspector General of Police (IGP) Dr Akbar Nasir Khan and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Traffic Dr Mustafa Tanveer took special measure while taking it seriously. Afterwards, the ITP was enabled to utilize all available resources and take strict measures against the traffic rules violators through modern equipment.

As per data released by the police in January this year, at least 15,000 e-tickets were issued over the past two weeks. In a statement issued on Jan 16, the authorities said that more than 49,000 tickets to motorists over traffic rules violations had been issued.

When the e-challan system was being exercised, the imposed penalty the ITP had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) making it between two government organizations to collect the fine manually as well as digitally. While the NBP had made it outsource with some private digital payment companies.

Now these companies are getting Rs 30 per ticket from violators. This was an extra amount of burden on motorists to issue fines. When asked about this issue, the police Spokesperson Taqi Jawad Baloch claimed that the ITP has nothing to do with such extra minting amounts. “The ITP has signed MoU with NPB for people to not create issues for them,” he recalled, adding that whatever the mechanism being used was a pure prerogative of the NBP.

According to the e-challan mechanism, digital tickets were delivered to the violators at their home addresses. A copy of the challan was attached with the master file of vehicles at the excise office in case of non-payment of the fine within the given time. Not only this, when someone repeats the same violation, his/her record will be sent to the relevant police station that includes in her character track record.

Earlier, SSP traffic Dr Tanveer had told this scribe that a penalty fine against the respective violations would be imposed on motor vehicle owners automatically. “To get a vehicle registered in your own name within 30 days after buying is mandatory under law. And if someone doesn’t do so, he/she violates the rule. This is because

He stated that a similar system was already operating in many countries of the word. “Keeping pace with technological advancement, a decision of launching an automatic system with lesser human involvement to control the traffic violations issue was made,” he added. While sharing details, the SSP stated that the digital system is linked with CCTV cameras of the Safe City Project installed at various locations in the capital.

When someone commits any violation, the CCTV will blink and punch a picture of the number plate of that vehicle. Some codes of compressive traffic rules are installed in the new system. “The system-linked CCTV will trace violations in accordance with messages generated by these codes,” Dr Tanveer briefed about the functioning of the new system.

The deducted vehicle registration numbers are put in the system and a fine ticket is generated automatically, he said. To reply to a question, Dr Tanveer said that currently only Islamabad and Punjab registered numbers are part of the plan. “As per an assessment most of the vehicles plying in the ICT are having registration with Islamabad and Punjab respectively that’s why only these both stations are yet made part of strategy,” he highlighted, adding that when the system would be fully operational rest provinces included as Sindh, KPK and AJK also to be included.