For no fault of theirs, owners of new vehicles, especially heavy vehicles such as lorries, are forced to pay heavy penalty at various traffic junctions for not having their Registration Certificates or Driving Licence (DL) in form of smart cards.
For the last four to five months, the vehicle owners have been bearing the brunt of the dearth of office stationery needed for making the smart cards at the respective regional transport offices such as smart cards, toners, ribbon and other equipment.
Deputy Transport Commissioner’s (DTC) offices in all 13 districts have software to prepare the RC and DL smart cards for which the IT wing of the Road Transport Authority (RTA) supplies the needed stationery every month as per the indent made by the regional offices.
Highly placed sources in the Transport Department say that the office stationery has been short in supply from June this year, after the contractor who is supplying the material to both Andhra and Telangana States asked for a revision of prices of the material.
He also demanded that to the arrears pending from November last year be cleared, the officials say.
According to A. Mohan, DTC (Kakinada), as many as 10,000 applications seeking RCs, DLs are pending with Rajahmundry, Amalapuram and Kakinada RTOs at present. Admitting that the authorities are very much aware of the woes of the vehicle owners, he said: “We are receiving the printing material once in a fortnight, that too, in a little quantity and it is not sufficient. Whenever we are getting the material, we are dispatching 1,000 to 2,000 DLs and RCs at one go.”