Daily Times

Dr Umar Saif, the founding Vice Chancellor of the Information Technology University (ITU) Punjab and the Chairman of Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), was briefed during a progress review meeting on Tuesday that more than 18 million (18,726,279) ‘electronic challans’ were issued through the (PITB)’s signature ‘e-Ticketing System’, which it developed for the National Highway and Motorway Police (NHMP).

These ‘e-Challans’ helped NHMP to collect a sum of Rs 8.2 billion in the fiscal year 2017-18, improved the overall efficiency of the challan process and facilitated the commuters to pay the fines at the spot without wasting their time to deposit the fine at the banks.

The meeting was informed that the ‘e-Ticketing System’ of NHMP was working on 573 registered devices while the officers registered as users were 2,584 and it helped 1,134,340 commuters with an average of almost 31,000 ‘e-Challans’ issued daily.

Dr Saif said that the result oriented system developed by the PITB was acknowledged by the public at large and it brought transparency in the traffic ticketing process by eliminating the chances of bribe and corruption.

The ‘e-Ticketing system’ was now operational across Pakistan after NHMP officials got the necessary training at the PITB which led to the reduced the number of traffic violations and a reduction of 44 % in traffic accidents in 2017, he added.

The ‘e-Ticketing’ system was developed in June 2015 and its first trial was conducted in August 2015 with the features to collect the details of the vehicles, accidents, date of the incident, habitual violators and real-time location at the time of challan. The system was improved recently and some additional features were incorporated in the app to assist the officers, which included the Pictures Module, Accident tagging with Pictures Module and Fine Reconciliation.

The NHMP with the help of the PITB already made 63 out of 64 beats completely paperless. The PITB was also developing an app named PASBAN, which would help in automation of the HR system at the NHMP.

Published in Daily Times, August 29^th 2018.