KARACHI: The Sindh government on Thursday started issuing the retro-reflective number plates of vehicles with new security feature.

Sindh Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control Minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla handed over number plates to some car owners at a programme held at the motor registration wing at Civic Centre.

He said the new number plates got several security features, aluminium sheets and bar code.

He said the number could easily be read even during night-time.

The minister said it was not possible to forge the new number plates or make a duplicate of them.

He said that soon the traffic police would be able to get all details of vehicles by just scanning the number plates and it would become easier to catch stolen vehicles on roads.

Mr Chawla said in the first phase, the new number plates would be given upon registration of new vehicles.

“Efforts are being made to issue new number plates to as many vehicles as possible within a year,” he said.

The minister, however, made no firm commitment to end the backlog of number plates of hundreds of thousands of vehicles in the province.

Recently, the Sindh ombudsman was informed by excise officials that 4.364 million number plates of cars and motorcycles had been pending in Sindh.

The officials said that the backlog of four-wheelers (commercial and non-commercial) number plates was 308,963. The excise department had already collected Rs1,000 from each vehicle owner at the time of registration.

The excise department informed the ombudsman office that due to limited resources, the department could only cater to 53,000 number plates of four-wheelers and 207,000 of two-wheelers in one year.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2022