Vehicle owners are finding it cumbersome to verify their purchases as the data on the Excise and Taxation (E&T) Department’s website has not been updated for eight months.
Purchasers of new vehicles or those who have gotten older vehicles transferred to their names find themselves returning to the E&T Department as there are no details about their vehicles on the Department’s website. E&T officials say the information has not been updated since June 2012 due to network problems.
A Motor Registration official speaking on the condition of anonymity said that several officers had requested the department to shut down the website until the information was updated. He said that the people who get cars transferred to their names were upset on finding their transfer not registered on the website which leads them in some cases to think the transfer has been invalid.
The Motor Transport Management Information System (MTMIS) project was started in 2007 in all 36 districts. The plan was to place the entire vehicle registration data on the website. So far nearly information of 6.5 million vehicles has been updated from a total of some 10 million vehicles. The entire data on vehicles purchased in 1994 to 2012 is available on the site. Other than Lahore, most districts seem to be generally up to date.
Officials in Lahore say that data of more than 200,000 vehicles is yet to be uploaded on the website.
Bilal Zeb, a visitor to the E&T Department, told The Express Tribune that he had bought a new car at the end of 2012 and had it registered. He said his car’s data was still not on the site. Zeb said when he went to the Motor Registration Authority for verification and he was told that the website was out of order.
Car dealer Rizwan Goraya said many customers were complaining about ‘invalid’ transfers. He said that even though he assured customers regarding registration they tended to doubt him as they could not find information regarding their cars on the website. Many customers asked him to accompany them to the Motor Vehicle Registration Authority, he added. E&T Department Database Administrator Zeeshan Chauhan said the data would be uploaded on the website in a maximum of two months. He added that the problem had been caused due to a networking issue and some glitches with electronics.
E&T Department Network Database Administrator Farrukh Iqbal said they were working round the clock to clear the backlog. He said they had managed to update the data from the entire province recently. Lahore’s data, he added, was much more than any other place in the province. He blamed the backlog on an internet problem.
E&T Department Director General Humayun Mazhar Sheikh said their IT team was addressing the matter. He said the connectivity issue that was causing the delay had been resolved.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 22nd, 2013.