Even as the district administration communicated its disapproval to manually issued certificates to confirm fitness of a vehicle to stay on road, the directive has sent vehicle owners in a State of shock as they stand vulnerable to penalty in the absence of sufficient testing centres. Reason: Only one such computurised centre is visible in the municipal area,
The district administration’s order has been issued to control pollution in the capital however the diktat overlooks the fact that a computerised pollution test centre is difficult to locate whereas the only one situated at Kutchery despite going full throttle can barely meet the requirement. Notwithstanding the fact, the district transport department would begin a crackdown against centres that issue manual certificates. The most flocked after testing centre issues about 1,200-1,500 fitness certificates every month.
“We have issued the instruction to make people aware and to caution those who issue manual certificate to either upgrade or close their units. We will start crackdown against such centres,” said District Transport Officer Nagendra Paswan.
The decision has been issued at the behest of the department of Transport as the manual certificates corroborate fitness by date of sale instead of checking smoke emitted by vehicles and the amount of pollutants contained in the smoke.
Interestingly, only 35 fitness centres have been authorised to issue fitness certificates in various parts of Jharkhand which include around 15 pollution testing centres in the capital where a series of initiatives have been enforced as well as taken suo-motu to shut down unfit vehicles and curb pollution. But, the department is yet to obtain number of manually operating centres in Ranchi and across the length and breadth of the State. Secretary, Transport, Ratan Kumar could not be reached for his comments.
“They (pollution testing centres) must be aware that they have to install computers. We are moving in the direction of ensuring that,” said an official of the department of Transport.
The department had made photography of vehicles at testing centres mandatory to curb practice of circumventing rules to obtain fitness certificate however loose monitoring could not ensure compliance at the testing centre’s end.
As punishment appears imminent for thousands of vehicle owners, they stand puzzled whether they should look for other centres or make a beeline outside the lone one operating in the city.