If everything goes the way it has been planned, traffic rule violators in the State Capital will feel the music in cashless way. City traffic establishment is in advanced stages of deploying traffic men with more than three dozens of cashless fine collecting machines from as soon as next Monday. Traffic men would appear on city roads with either PoS, also popularly known as card swiping machines, or mobile phones with at least one loaded e-wallet to collect fine in virtual mode.
“We are ready to start a two-day workshop for traffic constables and others from Friday. They will be provided technical know-how of the entire process and complexities added in it if any. Though it is not final yet, in most of the probabilities, the traffic men would be ready to collect traffic rules violation related fines through online from as early as coming Monday,” said Traffic SP Sanjay Ranjan Singh on Wednesday.
He said that some important issues needed to be resolved before implementation of cashless mode of transactions and that they were all being worked out in a comprehensive manner. The department also carried on a cashless fine collection at a couple of intersections only on pilot basis to understand the possible practical problems once the system was formally launched. Singh also said that the department got some dedicated officials to carry on cashless transaction processes in a seamless way.
“There is receipt related issue. Every traffic rule violator after being fined entertains right to have a receipt of the amount he has paid against the violation, in case there is any further proceedings related to that particular violation. Then there are internet support related issues. Yet again, there are manpower related issues. So, we are trying our best to overcome all these issues as early as possible before we claim to be ready to go cashless as far as fine collection is concerned,” said Singh.
After demonetization of `1,000 and `500 currency denominations on November 9, government departments have been competing with one another to go cashless in their financial transactions as much as they could. Traffic police establishment in the city had been in process of deploying PoS machines since then itself. But right after the launch of cashless Jharkhand campaign by Chief Minister Raghubar Das from Nagri earlier this month, the desire to go cashless has only accelerated like never before with departments like Food and Public distribution and Department of Education opting to use as much virtual mode of payments as possible.
Singh said that the traffic police and a bank have reached at an agreement of latter providing at least 40 PoS machines for fine collection purposes. “Transaction charge which a bank usually imposes on the merchant (traffic police in this case) on every card swipe was also a major issue in negotiation with the bank. However, the bank has agreed upon keeping the transaction charge at zero, making the way for us to go cashless sooner,” said Singh.