HAVING bought and registered a new car two years ago, I still drive with a temporary, stencilled, tin number plate. The Sindh excise and taxation department has failed to issue a regular number plate that ought to be provided with each new registration.

Needless to say that my civic reputation and my meagre financial resources have been hugely diluted in the process by the two unwarranted ‘chalans’ for the crime of carrying incorrect car number plates. Little do the police know that the real culprits reside in the Sindh excise and taxation department.

Thousands of other citizens suffer and have been suffering because of the same state-sponsored harassment for the last several years. Why should citizens be made victims because of the government’s incompetence to perform an absolutely simple task of providing original number plates at the time of registration?

All it requires is keeping sufficient number plates in inventory and issuing them on day one of the car registration — a normal practice in most countries.

The Sindh excise and taxation department has also failed to facilitate car owners to use electronic or mobile money transfer system for yearly payment of motor vehicle tax. The desire to retain archaic and torturous processes in Sindh is simply incomprehensible.

Can we once again, for the hundredth time, ask the Sindh chief minister to push his sleepy excise and taxation department to eliminate these two chronic ailments?

Naeem Sadiq

Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2019