Transport department begins issuing e-challans to traffic rule violators

NT NETWORK

PANAJI

The state transport department, on Tuesday, began using hand-held machines for issuing e-challans as it booked the traffic rule violators.

However, the first day saw the personnel of the enforcement cell of the department facing difficulties with ‘login,’ as they tried to use the devices for levying spot fine, and that consumed a lot of time.

The enforcement cell has been provided with four devices connected with central database Vahan and Sarathi software, which can retrieve details of driver and vehicle after driving licence number and vehicle registration number are entered in them.

With the China-made handheld device, called MOSAMBI,  traffic rule violator, who receives e-challan, can pay the fine instantly using credit or debit card.

The device also provides previous offence records of the driver and vehicle. The POS machines, which have been put to use from Tuesday, require a lot of improvement as the screen brightness is far low, and are not visible in the direct sunlight.  The machines do not have external memory card to save more than one photo, especially, while in offline mode. The keypad size is also small and two or more keys get pressed together.

Moreover, the offences listed on the devices do not match with the offences shown and booked, which could result in the payment of higher fine. The department has started the complete cashless process for collecting fines from the offenders so that with these machines more cases could be booked and  waiting time for the offenders would get reduced drastically.

Ironically, on the first day, the officials struggled to smoothly use the devices due to the low Internet speed, and it took them nearly five minutes for a successful login and further 15 minutes to complete the e-challan process, which was time consuming.

It was observed that under the manual system of imposing fines on the offenders, the officials used to book 20 cases as against ten cases under the digital system in a day.