August 20: The Department of Transport Management has stopped printing driving license after running out of stock of blank cards. The department, which had been printing cards for the last one and a half years, has not been able to print the cards this year because of the prohibitory order.

Due to the shortage of cards, the department has not been able to print licenses regularly since February last year. The regular printing of cards was stopped as the department had only 30,000 card in stocks in February. Meanwhile, the Director General of the Department Namaraj Ghimire says that only 20,000 blank cards are left after printing some essential cards. According to him, the department has printed the license and provided it only to a limited number of service seekers, civil servants, army personnel going abroad for foreign missions and police personnel after February.

The department has printed 2 million cards as of December 2020 and sent them to transport offices. Ghimire said that 600,000 cards are yet to be printed from January 2021. The department had printed one million cards and sent them to the transport offices during last year's lockdown alone. However, due to the prohibitory order, that have not been distributed.

The department had signed an agreement with French company Silp to acquire 1.4 million blank cards in February alone. Ghimire, the Director General of the department, said that the process of getting the card has already started. On Monday, the company sent 250 cards for testing. He informed that 1.4 million cards will be issued within the next month and a half.

 "We will test and place the order within a year," he said, “Although a time period of 3 months have been given to the company, we have requested them to send them earlier since we have a lot of pressure.” 

The company has assured that all the cards would be delivered by the last week of September. Although the department has said that the cards have been printed till December 2020, the service seekers have been complaining that they have not received the cards even though they applied for the license more than a year ago.

Rabindra Rajbanshi of Anamnagar, who applied to renew the card last year, complained that he did not get the card even though he reached the transport office last week.

Although the service seekers have been complaining that they have not received the cards, Director General Ghimire said adding that there may have been some problem in office management for the distribution of those cards.