LAHORE: The Punjab government is launching a scheme of registration of new vehicles through automobile dealers initially in Lahore from the first week of July.

The scheme is being introduced under the recently passed Punjab Motor Vehicle Transaction Licensees Bill, 2015, and its purpose is to license and regulate the services of the motor vehicle transaction licensees for improved service delivery to the purchasers of motor vehicles.

Under it, the dealers would not be able to hand over unregistered vehicles to the purchasers.

At present, the registration of motor vehicles involves the processing and documentation of various forms. Owing to this, the purchasers of motor vehicles tend to submit their documents through motor vehicle transaction agents who are neither licensed nor are their services regulated.

PITB is developing registration and plate ordering softwares

And the scheme has a mechanism for the licensing and regulation of such agents by fixation of their service charges and curtailment of their role.

Through this system, the vehicle registration and license plate issuance shall be done at the point of sale of the vehicle. After the Dealer Vehicle Registration System agreement has been signed by the dealers and the advance tax collected by them through an escrow account, the excise and taxation department will issue license plates to the dealers in a secured manner.

After the agreement has been signed and license plates issued to dealers, the dealers will be able to register vehicles on behalf of the excise department. These dealers will take the registration fee and a fixed convenience charge from the customer, register the vehicle through the registration system, and issue customers the license plates on the spot.

The dealers will collect the official documents of the vehicle from the customers and these documents will be sent to the excise department which will verify these documents and upon verification, send the registration book to the vehicle owner’s house.

In case any document is missing or incomplete, the dealers will be provided with time to send incomplete documents or else the license plate will be cancelled in the system and reported to the law-enforcement agencies for impounding the vehicle. To avoid this, apart from dealers, customers will also be advised to ensure that complete documentation is sent to the E&T department.

The excise departments in 36 districts of Punjab will also be connected as part of this project so that a centralised data repository is created where the data can be uploaded and updated in real time and viewed by dealers and the departments.

Meanwhile, sources said the Punjab Information Technology Board was developing the dealer vehicle registration as well as the plate ordering softwares. The excise department was working on rules of the bill.

The system would be piloted from Lahore and eventually be rolled out to other districts in Punjab.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2015

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