Kathmandu, December 11

The Department of Transport Management (DoTM) has started printing smart driving licences through mass printer from today, giving hopes to thousands of service-seekers who are yet to get their smart vehicle driving permits.

Though the department imported the high-capacity printer in September to address the soaring demand of smart driving licences, operation of the printer was delayed citing technical reasons.

Interestingly, high-level officials from DoTM had to visit Italy to learn about the function of the printer and its operational procedure recently.

DoTM Director General Gogan Bahadur Hamal informed that the printer has been brought into operation from today.

“Thousands of service-seekers have been waiting for months to get their smart driving licences. By bringing the mass printer into operation, we aim to issue the smart driving permit to all service-seekers within April next year,” said Hamal.

As per him, the new mass printer has the capacity to print 450 smart cards in an hour. Though the printer will be operated for eight hours a day initially, Hamal informed that it will be used for more hours soon under different shifts.

“We’re planning to use the printer in three shifts of seven hours each, to print smart driving licences. We will be able to issue smart driving licences to all pending service-seekers within next four months,” added Hamal.

Due to inadequate printing capacity with the department, DoTM has not been able to issue smart driving licences to almost 800,000 service-seekers who had applied for renewal of old licence or had passed vehicle trial almost one year ago.

DoTM expects that the new mass printer will be able to print almost 8,000 driving licences in one day. With this, the department plans to print almost 240,000 smart driving licences in a month.

“In a few months, DoTM will be able to issue smart driving licences on the same day that a service-seeker passes vehicle trial,” Hamal claimed.