Daily Times

LAHORE: The City Traffic Police (CTP) on Saturday launched a massive crackdown across the city against vehicles with illegal number plates, tinted glasses and without registration papers.

According to the CTP spokesman, 279,274 challans have been issued so far this year to vehicles with unapproved or illegal number plates and tinted glasses.

He said that on the directions of Chief Traffic Office (CTO) Tayyab Hafeez Cheema, divisional SPs continued the campaign in their areas and took measures to eradicate the trend of vehicles roaming around with non-prescribed number plates.

The CTO said that use of illegal green plates was an illegal act and every citizen should avoid breaking the law. He said special arrangements have also been made to control traffic jams in the city. “Wrong parking of vehicles on city roads is strictly being checked and any act of negligence on part of the traffic police officials would not be tolerated,” he affirmed.

The CTO directed the wardens to take action against violators of traffic rules in accordance with the law and keep a vigilant eye on suspicious vehicles. “Strict action in accordance with the law has also been ordered against vehicles having tinted glasses or moving in the city without number plates,” he said.

Cheema also directed the traffic wardens to work with dedication and commitment and ensure the traffic flow so that traffic mess particularly on congested roads could be averted. The CTO stressed upon the citizen to cooperate with the traffic police to make the journey safer for themselves and others.

It is pertinent to mention that the Special Monitoring Unit (law and order) had organised a meeting of the Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control Department with Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Amin Wains, Deputy Inspector General (Operations) Ashraf Haider and CTO Cheema on August 9, 2016. A focal person from the ET&NC Department and the CCPO Office was appointed to ensure better coordination and real time data integration between the two departments.

The SPU apprehended the loopholes the terrorist take advantage of and had suggested that in order to initiate a crackdown in the domain of vehicle registration and issuance of unauthorised license plates, it was essential for the departments to coordinate with each other to initiate work from the grassroots level up to creating processes in the departments, which would eventually create a system that would feed into the National Action Plan and eliminate terrorism from Punjab.

Following the issuance of The Provincial Motor Vehicle Ordinance, 1965, the ET&NC Department with complete support from the CCPO Office would initiate a crackdown soon against manufacturers of fake number plates. The Provincial Motor Vehicle Ordinance prescribes penalty for counterfeiting or unauthorized preparation of the number plates and mandates the display of the security features number plates on the motor vehicles.

The City Traffic Police has already initiated a crackdown on all vehicles that are operational in Punjab and are either unregistered “Applied for” or have displayed fake number plates or plates that are not officially issued by the Excise and Taxation Department.

According to the figures issued by the CTO, in Lahore 62,293 ‘Applied for’ vehicles, 371 green plates and 158,152 vehicles have been fined. Strict instructions have been issued by CCPO regarding maintainince of no tolerance policy against the owners of fake number plates or ‘Applied for’ vehicles after which the vehicles would not only be fined but would be ceased unless the owner produces official documentation and gets their vehicle registered.