Seven months have passed since the Department of Transport Management and the Security Printing Center signed an agreement to print old-date driver's licenses in two phases, but the printing work has not been completed. So far, only 1,323,021 smart licenses have been printed.

The number of old-date licenses was 2.9 million. Accordingly, 1,576,979 licenses are yet to be printed. Out of the 2.9 million, an agreement was signed between the Department and the Center on 12 Kartik 2082 for the printing of 1.2 million licenses. According to the agreement, the Center was supposed to print and deliver them by 12 Baisakh 2083. Accordingly, the Center printed and delivered 1.2 million licenses to the Department. A second-phase agreement was signed on 4 Baisakh to print the remaining 1.7 million licenses by 32 Asar. After 36 days, only 1,23,021 licenses have been printed.

Meanwhile, the executive director of the center, Devraj Dhungana, who was busy printing old licenses, had resigned after the government brought an ordinance regarding the removal of public officials. The center is now without an executive director. This has also affected the printing of licenses. Since the date of the agreement, 1.44 million licenses should have been printed at the rate of 40,000 per day. But this has not been done.

In the first lot, 37,698 licenses were printed for urgent situations and 31,227 licenses were printed as promised to be provided within 24 hours of payment of revenue. Currently, 2,562 licenses have been printed for urgent situations in the second phase and 69,562 licenses to be provided within 24 hours of payment of revenue. The center's deputy secretary, Gopalraj Timilsina, said that it took some time even though there was a delay in reaching an agreement with the department for printing the second phase of licenses.

‘The department did not even have a budget, it took time to transfer the money and get the budget,’ Timilsina said, ‘In the meantime, there was a delay in the arrival of the necessary materials for printing the licenses, due to which the licenses could not be printed immediately.’

Timilsina says that work is being done accordingly after the materials required for printing arrived from Friday. ‘At this time, the printing work was almost completed as per the agreement,’ he said, ‘There is no problem now, as per the agreement, we will print all the licenses by Asad 32.’

Timilsina says that there should be no delay in getting the license printing data from the department. ‘The average printing capacity of the machine is 40,000 per day, sometimes there are problems with printing due to electricity problems,’ he said, ‘but if there is no problem, up to 50,000 can be printed.’ After the licenses are printed and sent to the relevant transport management offices, there is a rush of service recipients who come to collect them. Service recipients have been waiting in line to receive their licenses. Keshav Khatiwada, Director of the Department of Transport Management, said that once the licenses are printed, they are being sent to the concerned transport office through the Postal Service Department. However, the work of sending them door-to-door to the addresses of the concerned persons has not been done. ‘Now, preparations are underway to print the old licenses of the Ekantakuna Transport Management Office from Tuesday, we are sending the data of 450,000 there,’ he said, ‘There is no problem in providing the data, we provide the data to the center daily at the rate of 100,000.’ He said that the licenses are being printed and provided to the service recipients as soon as the revenue is paid.

On average, 4,000 data is received daily for printing new licenses. This is the number coming from 42 transport management offices across the country. After passing the trial at all transport management offices throughout the day and paying the revenue, the Department of Transport Management sends the data to the center by 6 pm every day except on public holidays. The current license is being printed with additional features. Previously, the license that service recipients were receiving had a total of 18 features.

But now the license that service recipients will receive has 39 features. The center has stated that features such as intelligent QR, readable zone, visible to the naked eye, visible with the help of equipment, and visible only from the lab have been added. The front and back of the printed license have two QRs, one on the front and one on the back, in which the center and the service recipient and the traffic police can scan the QR on the front. The previous license had a chip.