ISLAMABAD-Excise and Taxation department teams have seized four stolen vehicles and handed them over to the Rawalpindi police so that they can be processed before being returned to their owners.
The stolen vehicles had been brought to the excise office for registration, Director Excise Bilal Azam told APP on Thursday.
While checking the records and conducting a physical examination, it was discovered that the vehicles were stolen after which the police were notified, he added.
He added that vehicles were also physically checked while ownership of registered vehicles was verified to avoid tampered vehicles from being registered.
A few months ago, the department had recovered around 18 vehicles where a physical inspection had disclosed that their chassis number had been tampered with and were registered as stolen with various police stations in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
To a query, he said the department had decided to issue E-Tags for every vehicle to minimise car theft incidents in the federal capital.
Each E-Tag will carry a coded identification number that the driver can paste on the windscreen or number plate of the vehicle, Bilal added.
The exact identification number must be stored in the department’s database, to which the identification number on the E-Tag would be synced, he added.
The E-Tags, he said would assist the department in identifying and searching for the stolen cars with the help of a Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID).
The department has taken a number of steps in the recent months towards digital Pakistan initiative to facilitate the customers.
Few months back, it introduced an app for the capital city residents to register and transfer their vehicles from home.
Meanwhile excise director held a meeting with representatives of local auto manufacturers to address the issues of vehicles owners.
It was decided in the meeting that residents of the city could get new vehicles registered within the premises of the showrooms.
Through the mechanism, a vehicle will get registered before it is driven.
“It will make buying vehicles easier for citizens as there will be no need to come to the Excise office to get the vehicle registered,” the director remarked.
The department on average received 200 applications for registration of new vehicles daily.