Kathmandu, March 15

The Department of Transport Management (DoTM) has said that it will prohibit vehicles without ‘green stickers' (vehicle worthiness indicator) to ply on all metropolitan cities and sub-metropolis roads from mid-April, including in the Kathmandu Valley.

Rupnarayan Bhattarai, director general at DoTM, informed that vehicles not undergoing fitness checks and not obtaining green stickers after mid-April will be disallowed to run on roads. Also, the government will moot action against owners of such vehicles.

Citing that a majority of vehicles running on domestic roads are refusing to undergo fitness checks, which has resulted in security and environmental threats, DoTM is mulling over strictly imposing the fitness checking provision for vehicles from mid-April.

As per the existing legal provision, all private vehicles should undergo fitness checks once a year. Public vehicles, on the other hand, should undergo such checks once every six months.

Earlier, the Ministry of Population and Environment (MoPE) had urged DoTM to bring all vehicles under fitness checking system of the government as a majority of vehicles operating in the country had been found to be emitting harmful smoke exceeding the emission limits set by the government.

However, it is also to be noted that the earlier inspections carried out by MoPE had found that even the vehicles termed ‘fit' by the DoTM were exceeding the government set emission limits.

Meanwhile, DoTM has already directed its staffers to properly inspect the road worthiness of vehicles.