Replacing Vehicles’ Number Plates
BRTA falls far short of target
The authorities have fallen far short of the target to affix retro-reflective number plates to radiofrequency identification (RFID) tags on motor vehicles in one year.
The project was undertaken to improve services in the transport sector.
Officials of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority said that lack of enough space in Dhaka city was delaying the process of implementing the project.
The two-year Retro-Reflective Number Plate Project, was inaugurated by prime minister Sheikh Hasina, on October 31, 2012. BMTF began replacing the number plates in Dhaka on November 7. 2012.
Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory Limited is carrying out the task of replacing the number plates.
BRTA director (engineering) Mohammad Saiful Hoque told New Age on Thursday that the total number of registered motor vehicles in Bangladesh was about 17.51 lakh when the process of affixing number plates had started.
According to the project, BMTF was asked to fix retro-reflective plates on nine lakh vehicles in one year and on the rest by the following year, he said.
The process would continue for other vehicles, which have been or would be registered after June 2012, Saiful said.
He said that so far the factory affixed a total of 1.96 lakh number plates to different types of motor vehicles and produced 5.22 lakh number plates.
The director further said that at present BMTF was affixing about 1,200 number plates to vehicles daily at BRTA’s Mirpur and Ekuria offices.
However, the task requires BMTF to replace about 2,466 number plates each day to cover nine lakh motor vehicles across the country within a year.
Lack of space disrupted the process as Mirpur and Ekuria offices of BRTA could not cope with a large number of vehicles, said Saiful.
‘We hope that BMTF will be able to affix number plates to 17.51 lakh vehicles by 2014,’ he added.
Another senior official of the transport authorities said that BRTA should immediately find a place with enough space to continue with the work.
BMTF official Major Wajedul Haque told New Age that the work was continuing.
‘Affixing retro-reflective number plates is a continuous process,’ he added.
The BRTA is not cancelling the registrations or keeping any record of ‘permanently unfit and destroyed motor vehicles’.
It is believed that out of 17.51 lakh registered vehicles in the country, 1.39 are unfit, considering the fact that their owners failed to obtain mandatory annual fitness certificates, said an official quoting BRTA records as of June 2012.
Retro-reflectivity materials have the ability to send most of light back to its source.
Radio-frequency identification is the use of a wireless non-contact system that uses radio-frequency electronic fields to transfer data from a tag attached to an object for the purposes of automatic identification and tracking.
-With New Age Input
