KARACHI, July 17: Police and the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) have expressed their serious reservations over the viability of the Vehicles Identification and Monitoring System (VIMS), designed and proposed by the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra).

At a meeting held a couple of days back under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, high ranking officials of police and CPLC pinpointed the lacunae in the proposed system, maintaining that the system would not help law-enforcers in lessening crime, well-placed sources close to the meeting confided to Dawn on Monday. Senior Nadra officials also attended the meeting.

The sources said that the police and CPLC representatives stressed on establishing an integrated and centralised databank of vehicles like the ID cards databank established by Nadra.

An independent authority should be established for it, they said, maintaining that a National Vehicle Authority in the federal capital and a similar authority for each of the provinces was the need of the hour, as proposed in the previous years. They opposed opting for an experiment on Nadra’s flawed project.

According to them, the meeting was told that the Nadra project could only inform the law-enforcers about a vehicle having passed through a particular point, but it could not help locate the vehicle.

The sources said that the Nadra system was not meant for tracking down a snatched or stolen vehicle, but such a system was globally used to maintain a record and keep a track of toll tax collection, besides some other industrial purposes.

The technology is known as ‘radio frequency identification technology’, first invented by Harry Stockman and introduced in his 1948 report of ‘Communication by Means of Reflected Power’.

However, Nadra claims having conceived, designed and developed the VIMS with the purpose of checking vehicle theft.

It claimed that the project was a ground-based tracking system, which would not only enable the law-enforcement authorities to monitor movement of vehicles but also to regulate and manage traffic during peak hours and in cases of emergency.

According to Nadra, initially Karachi would have 20 locations from where the chips (VINTAG) would be issued to vehicle owners. Each location would register approximately 1,000 vehicles a day, thus it would take the authorities hardly four to five months to get all vehicles operating in Sindh registered.

In Karachi alone, there are approximately 1.5 million vehicles and Nadra will collect Rs300 for a motorcycle and Rs1,200 for some other vehicle under the head of registration. Initially, there would be 19 check-posts, 10 of them fixed and the rest mobile.

Three control centres to check and monitor vehicle movement will also be established. All these units will be connected with the control centres through the ordinary telephone network.

The officials at the meeting also objected to the unreasonably high fees terming it an unnecessary burden on common man. The sources said that the estimated collection, more than Rs600 million, would be bagged by Nadra whereas the provincial government, after taking over the project, would have to bear the recurring expenses, which would run into millions.