LAHORE: The Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control Department is launching another SMS service for data of motor vehicle registration.
The then ET&NCD director general, Naseem Sadiq, launched SMS code 9966 which was being managed by the Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL). However, it was discontinued by the end of 2014; the same year of its launch.
PRAL also stopped updating data of new purchased vehicles, token taxes, issuances of number plates and transfers. The helpline, despite being scrapped, was still providing data that was misleading not only to the motor vehicle owners, but also the police. The data has only been updated last updated till late 2014, but did not provide any subsequent updates.
Resultantly, any transaction made after 2015 was not shown in the reply text.
This confused police in determining the ownership, token tax and number plate records. According to the ET&NCD, several letters have been written to PRAL to discontinue the SMS service to end the confusion. The department received complaints from motor vehicle users who had to face massive inconvenience due to the misleading data.
An official of ET&NCD said they had issued SIMs to traffic wardens instead of getting details of registrations of any vehicle. However, some traffic wardens speaking on the condition of anonymity said that they did not use those SIMs at all.
