KATHMANDU, Jan 11: Germany's Muehlbauer Company is dispatching 600,000 driver’s license cards to Kathmandu on Thursday. The company has got the contract to deliver 1.2 million cards for the transportation system. Of that, the first batch of 600,000 cards is scheduled to arrive on Thursday. The remaining 600,000 cards will be shipped within the next 45 days.
Uddhav Prasad Rijal, director general of the Department of Transport Management (DoTM), said that 600,000 cards will be transported from Germany through Qatar Airways. According to him, card printing will start from mid-January. Rijal said that the DoTM has the capacity to print 7,000 cards in a day, if the department's machine is operated around the clock. Rijal said, “As soon as the cards arrive, we will send them to Germany again for lab testing. It takes about a week to receive the cards after reaching Germany," Rijal said. "After that, we will proceed with printing." According to the DoTM, there are currently 14,58,000 drivers who have passed and/or renewed their driver's licenses waiting for the card.
Restoring public faith in the government
According to the DoTM, the printing of driving licenses has been stopped for the last six months. Currently, the DoTM is issuing licenses to a very limited number of people who are going to work abroad and study abroad. It has also been found that there is financial manipulation.
Very few cards are being printed from the limited stock of cards that the department has. According to the DoTM, 4,000 to 5,000 people pass license exams and renew their licenses every day.
