HARIPUR: A large number of applicants and local residents have lambasted the cumbersome process of issuance of driving licences, extended delay in handling their applications and insufficient facilities at the Citizens Facilitation Centre (CFC), causing a huge backlog of pending applications.

Talking to Dawn here on Saturday, the visitors at CFC Haripur said that for issuance of driving licences, domicile certificates and certain revenue records, the district administration had established the CFC at the district secretariat in September last year to ensure speedy processing of applications against certain amount of fee for the services.

A facilitation fee of Rs500 has been fixed for issuance of each new or renewed LTV/HTV licence, and Rs1,500 as card fee per application in designated bank branch. The applicants said that they were also required to get their medical fitness certificate from DHQ hospital for obtaining driving licences.

Samad Khan, a 65-year-old resident of Haripur, who spent almost a day for renewal of his LTV licence, said that the CFC officials had given him October 8 as collection date for his licence. He was of the view that the processing of licence should hardly take a day or two.

He questioned and criticised the justification of collection of Rs 500 in the name of facilitation fee when the CFC officials were unable to facilitate an applicant.

Some official sources, while talking to Dawn, confirmed that the number of pending driving licences had crossed the figure of 9000 for Haripur district.

Two other applicants namely Waseef Ahmed and Adil Khan told Dawn that their driving licences were due in October last year, but they were still pending to be issued by the CFC.

An informed source confided to Dawn that a printing machine was installed in Abbottabad for entire Hazara division to issue driving licences a few years back but it was out of order.

Commenting on the situation, Samiullah Khan Advocate lamented that the lack of facilities of medical examination and fee collection at the CFC was pathetic and the problem should be addressed by the authorities at the earliest.

When approached for comments, the Additional Deputy Commissioner (G) Dr Adil Ayub confirmed that there was a huge backlog of driving licences in Haripur.

He said that he was continuing his efforts to get a medical officer posted at CFC for the issuance of medical fitness certificates to applicants.

The additional deputy commissioner agreed to the question that the printing of driving licences should be de-centralised, empowering the districts to install printing machines for putting an end to the backlog issue.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2024