The printing of 1.2 million driving licenses out of the 2.9 million old-date licenses that have passed the trial and paid revenue for renewal has been completed. As per the agreement signed between the Department of Transport Management and the Security Printing Center on 12 Kartik, 1.2 million smart licenses have been printed. As per the agreement signed on 4 Baisakh, the Security Printing Center is preparing to print an additional 1.7 million licenses in the second phase.

The Security Printing Center is currently busy mobilizing resources for this. Since 40,000 licenses are printed daily, all the old licenses will be printed by mid-Asad, said Devraj Dhungana, executive director of the center. The center says that there will be no problem in completing it as the license printing work will be done even on public holidays. According to the center, 37,698 emergency licenses and 31,227 licenses that have passed the trial and paid daily revenue have been printed.

‘If two lakh data comes from the department at once, we start printing it all at once,’ said Dhungana, the executive director of the center, ‘Currently, the work of printing licenses for daily emergency and service recipients who pay revenue on the same day is being done regularly.’ He claims that the second phase of licenses will be printed before mid-Ashar. On average, 4,000 data is received daily for printing new licenses.

39 types of features in the new license

This is the number coming from 42 transport management offices across the country. The Department of Transport Management sends the data to the center by 6 pm every day except public holidays after passing the trial at all transport management offices throughout the day and paying the revenue. ‘We can print the new license data within 24 hours of receiving it,’ said Executive Director Dhungana, ‘after that we send it to the department.’

The current license is being printed with additional features. Earlier, the license that the service recipient was receiving had a total of 18 features. But now the license that the service recipient is receiving has 39 features. The Security Printing Center has said 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 printed license has two QR codes on the front and back, in which the QR code on the front can be scanned by the service recipient and the traffic police. The previous license had a chip. The work of sending the printed license to the relevant transport offices through the Postal Service Department is being done, said Keshav Khatiwada, Director of the Transport Management Department. ‘We are preparing to send the data for printing the second lot of licenses,’ he said, ‘That will also be printed soon and we will send the printed licenses to the relevant offices by post.’ Currently, the largest number of licenses to be printed is from the Transport Management Office, Ekantakuna, Lalitpur. Director Khatiwada says that there are about 900,000 old licenses to be printed under this office.

Now driving licenses will be printed within 24 hours of paying the revenue

‘It was agreed to print 1.2 million licenses in the first lot, but since there are a lot of people in Ekantakuna, sending the data for only this office would cause problems in printing other offices,’ he said, ‘In the second lot, we will give priority to sending the data for this office.’