SHILLONG: Registering a new vehicle in the East Khasi Hills district has become a daunting task for car owners. Those who have purchased a vehicle in the first week of December are yet to get their registration.
This undue delay has made many people depend on dalals (middlemen) who do the work for them at a price. Many car owners have said that the District Transport Offices across the State is a hub of corruption and nothing gets done unless palms are grease Several vehicle owners who were loitering around in the corridor said that files in the DTO’s office do not move unless the dealing assistants are paid and only those with connection in that office can get their work done.
Refuting the allegations that it takes over a month to get a vehicle registered, the acting DTO C Lyngdoh, on Tuesday, said, “The delay might have happened earlier but not during my tenure.”
The Acting DTO revealed that in a single day 30-40 applications are received in the office for registration of new vehicles.
But the aggrieved vehicles owners have a different story to tell. They say that in the age of computerization the registration process should not take so long no matter how many new vehicles are on the road every day.
The acting DTO however admitted that there may have been a delay particularly for registration of commercial vehicles but that is because they fail to produce all the required documents.
It may be mentioned that the entire DTO office in East Khasi Hills went online with the computerisation of this office way back in 2002. But frequent visitors to that office find the staff incompetent and not geared to deal with matters efficiently as the situation demands. The laid back Government system continues despite the computers, they said.