Since the printing of licenses began on November 21, only 8,983 licenses have been printed.
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Around nine thousand driving licenses with QR codes have been printed in two months at the Security Printing Center located in Panauti Municipality-5.
The Department of Transport Management has stated that 8,983 licenses have been printed since the center started printing licenses on November 21.
The department's 'mass printer' was vandalized during the Genji movement, and the license printing has been resumed from the center. Minister for Communications and Information Technology Jagdish Kharel inaugurated the license printing by pressing the button of the printing press at the center on November 21. An agreement was signed between the center and the department on November 12 for the printing of licenses. According to which, the center has to provide 1.2 million licenses to the department within six months.
Keshav Khatiwada, IT Director of the department, informed that 8,983 licenses have been printed in the past two months. According to him, the department has already given the responsibility to print 1.2 million licenses to the center. He said that currently, around 3 million licenses are yet to be printed, including those that have passed new trials and those that have applied for renewal. 'Only essential licenses have been printed, out of about nine thousand printed, seven thousand licenses have been distributed,' Khatiwada said.
The department has stated that it is preparing to print general licenses. Khatiwada informed that 100,000 'data' is being sent at once. The center has stated that it aims to print the remaining 1.191 million smart cards within the next two months as per the agreement with the department.
Although the work so far seems slow, the center's executive director Devraj Dhungana said that the pace will be increased from the month of Magh. 'Since the initial phase is a trial period, only a small number of licenses have been printed, the pace of work will be increased from the next week with new manpower,' he said, 'Internal preparations are underway to print smart licenses at the rate of 10,000 per day from Magh.'
In the first two weeks, 520 licenses printed for the first time at the center were handed over to the department. According to Dhungana, the license was handed over to the department after the successful testing in Nepal's own lab. According to the agreement with the department, 1.2 million licenses will be printed at the rate of 100,000 in the first three months and 900,000 in the remaining three months.
QR codes have been used instead of chips in the cards printed by the center. According to the center, it has a high-level security system. The new card will use up to six levels of security technology. The card will have 34 types of security features, some of which will be visible and some invisible. The center is preparing to print postage stamps, citizenship, excise stickers, red papers and visa stickers in addition to licenses.
Samples of excise stickers were printed at the center using two highly secure digital machines brought from Iraq. The two machines currently installed can print 600 million excise 'stickers' annually. Once the press is fully operational, it is expected to save Rs 10 billion from Nepal annually for security printing. The center will require about 1,000 manpower, including 200 technicians.
The government had prepared an action-oriented and result-oriented master plan in 2080 BS to develop security printing in three phases. Accordingly, in the first phase, Nepal will become self-reliant within five years, and in the second phase, reliable security printing services and quality security products will be provided to SAARC and Southeast Asian countries within the next ten years. In addition, in the third phase, a strategy has been set to provide reliable security printing services and quality security products to other third countries within the next 15 years.
The park was converted into a security printing center five years ago after the physical infrastructure built for the Information Technology Park (IT Park) was left unused. The park, located on a total of 257 ropanis of land, has two large commercial/administrative buildings and four well-equipped residential buildings and a warehouse.
