By Nayak Paudel
Kathmandu, Apr. 19: How long should one wait to sit for license examinations after submitting their applications? One week, two weeks or two months? But these days, one has to wait for as long as eight months to take the license exams.
“I applied for the driving license of motorcycle on February 21. I have been given the date for October 21 to visit the transport office for biometrics. I am bound to wait for eight months for my turn,” said Roshan Shrestha, a resident of Tinkune.
After the government imposed a nationwide lockdown in March last year to prevent COVID-19 spread, the government’s department of transport was unable to conduct any driving license examination for months.
Many individuals, who were awaiting their turn, had to wait longer. It was only on December 29, 2020, when the department started receiving new applicants and conducting driving license examinations.
While those in the Kathmandu Valley have to wait for around eight months for their turn, officials of the concerned department stated that those outside the valley are awaiting three to four months for their turns.
According to the Department of Transport Management (DoTM), a total of 714,799 individuals have registered applications for the driving license examinations since December 29, 2020 to April 13, 2021 (the last day of Nepali year 2077 B.S.).
During the period, only 151,999 individuals could appear the examinations.
The DoTM also informed that on average more than 5,000 individuals apply for the driving license examination on a daily basis.
However, neither the DoTM nor the provincial Transportation Management Service Offices could give the exact number of applicants waiting for their turn to appear the exams. “We have many applicants who could not give their examinations due to the COVID-19 pandemic-led lockdown; they all have piled alongside the new ones. We have to prioritise the ones who applied first due to which new applicants are bound to wait long,” said Lok Nath Bhusal, information officer at the DoTM.
There are 23 trial centres for driving license examinations across the country and four of them are in the Kathmandu Valley. The 23 trial centres are equipped to conduct examinations of around 5,000 individuals a day. Therefore, the officials argue that they can’t conduct examinations for more and help reduce the waiting time for applicants.
Several officials from different transport department offices across the country, with whom The Rising Nepal spoke to, argued that their manpower and capacity have not increased from those they had before the lockdown.
“We need to conduct examinations for more applicants daily if we need to reduce the number of awaiting applicants. But with the available resources, we cannot increase the quotas of examinees for the exams,” said Bhakta Bahadur Bhandari, chief at the Transportation Management Service Office of Bagmati Province. Regarding the upgrading of the trial centres to enroll more applicants into the exams, the central and provincial departments have contradictory statements. “The trial centres now fall under the jurisdiction of the provincial governments. It is the provincial government which needs to upgrade their manpower and resources to conduct examination for more applicants,” said Information Officer Bhusal of the DoTM.
Meanwhile, Bagmati Province’s Transport Management Office argued that they had already asked the concerned authority to increase their manpower but they have not received any answer yet.
“We had requested to increase our resources two months ago to the Bagmati Province Ministry of Physical Infrastructure Development. The ministry says that they have forwarded it to the Department of Transport Management but we haven’t heard anything,” said Bhandari.
While the trial centres continue to conduct examinations under their previous capacity, officials argue that it cannot help reduce the number of applicants so that the new ones should not wait for months for their turn.
“License examinations must be conducted properly but it must not compel people to wait for months. It will increase the violation of driving vehicles without license. In the meetings with the transport department, we have asked to increase the quotas for examination and we hope they will implement it at the earliest,” said Superintendent of Police (SP) Shyam Krishna Adhikari, spokesperson at the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division.