Another mega scam is in the making in Punjab about criminal mega scam or theft of 0.5 million original files and documents of vehicles in the Motor Registration Branch of the Punjab Excise and Taxation Department, Pakistan Today has learnt. The documents and files belonged to the 2004 period when the department had not started computerisation of data of vehicles. Before 2004, all data was kept in the department and never handed over to genuine owners of vehicles. In 2008, it was announced to computerise all data of 0.5 million files but the plan could not be materialised. With so many files disappeared, officials in the department fear that smugglers might try and possibly succeed in having illegal cars registered anew on lost registration files.
They will also try to get duplicate registration books issued, claiming to have misplaced the original ones and the authority will have no way of verifying if the claims were true or not. Sources in the department revealed that the record room of the motor registration branch, officially bound to keep and maintain original files of vehicles was in a state of disarray. “A large number of data that proves vehicles’ ownerships has gone missing. Hundred of files are reported to have been taken away. Department has also traced some cases in which files were stolen, sold and tampered with different names,” sources disclosed. Senior officials told Pakistan Today that as the original data was not available, in most of the cases detection of tampering had been quite impossible “Racket of officials in the department involved in scandal is still on the loose as it know well that due to non-availability of original data, no authority could take action against it,” he added.
Some years ago, a similar scandal erupted in which at least 0.2 million original vehicle registration files had mysteriously disappeared from the record room of the Farid Kot House, Motor Registration Branch of the excise and taxation department. The lost files were the record of vehicles registered between 1970 and 2000. In 2001, the department had introduced computerised registration software for all vehicles and all new files were handed over to vehicles’ owners. The old files were to be uploaded onto the software. The department initiated the Motor Transport Management Information System (MTMIS) Project costing around Rs 1 billion for computerisation of all old and new files of vehicles. But former secretary Khawaja Shamiyal prevented to get a third party audit of the project causing a stumbling rock in the process of the project.
Motor Registration Branch Director Rao Shakeel Ahmed said that nine clerks of the motor branch had been issued show-cause notices for not updating the record of vehicles. He said that Motor Branch Record Room In-charge Ghulam Rasool had also been served a notice in this regard. Shakeel said that staff of the record room had been directed to put the house in order on instructions of Punjab Excise and Taxation DG Anwar Rashid. He claimed that around 12,000 original files had been handed over to owners and the rest of them to be given soon. Shakeel said that teams had been constituted to rectify all data in Kasur, Sheikhupura and Okara.
