KATHMANDU, Feb 14: The Department of Transport Management (DoTM), the government body that issues driving licenses, on Wednesday launched a new system to inform the general public about the results of their driving license tests and information regarding the status of their smart license cards through SMS.
The system was launched amid a function at the DoTM head office in Minbhawan, Kathmandu, after signing an agreement in this regard between the director general (DG) of the DoTM, Lawanya Kumar Dhakal, and the managing director of Sparrow SMS, Arvind Sah.
While inaugurating the system, DG Dhakal expressed confidence that the use of Information and Communication Technology will be very effective in informing license aspirants about the test results and license printing status.
Smart card printing introduced in Nepal
The DoTM had started distribution of smart driving license from December 2015. The government had signed a one-off contract with Malika Incorporate last September to speed up the printing work amid growing complaints over an inordinate delay in issuing the licenses.
Although the company was supposed to print 600,000 smart licenses within two months, it has been able to print only 360,000 licenses in four months.
Due to the poor performance, the DoTM stopped printing the licenses through Malika Incorporate.
According to the DoTM, around 400,000 people have already received smart licenses and around 1.4 million people are currently using government receipts instead of smart licenses.
The department has recently started an online application process for obtaining driving license in Nepal. To support this, the department is using SMS service for showing driving license results for written tests and driving license status. Before this, people had to visit the DoTM office to see the result and get further information.
Government officials claimed that people will not need to visit the department to check the status regarding their driving license and written exam result from now on. According to the department, this will end the long serpentine queues at transportation offices just for getting some information. The department informed Republica that people can receive the information by sending SMS to 33001 for just Rs 5.
Issuing a press statement, the department said that service seekers will have to type 'WT < space > [Application ID number]' and send it to 33001 to check the result for the written test. Similarly, to check the printing status of smart driving license, the service seekers will have to type 'LC < space > [Application ID Number]' and send it to 33001.
