HYDERABAD: Hyderabad traffic police have long been mulling to go paperless and four months since it was first announced, it appears the proposal is a step short of being shelved.
It was in December last year, that the then Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Jitender announced a month’s time to implement the plan.
Instead of issuing challans to the traffic violators as paper receipts, they were to be issued challans via SMS or email. However, what actually turned into a roadblock in the implementation is the fact that not every traffic violator uses a smartphone or owns an e-mail id.
“We initially made an effort to send receipts to the traffic violators through SMS or emails. This was only an addition to department’s plan to go cashless,” said DCP (Traffic) AV Ranganath.
As per that plan, cops were supposed to collect fines from traffic violators through debit or credit cards. “However, we realised that if we use one personal digital assistant (PDA) machine from the same spot both for the purpose of issuing challans through SMS or e-mail, and for online transaction, there is a risk of some online fraud.
In that case, we will have to issue paper receipts. It will take time for the entire department to go paperless. As of now, a lot of traffic cops are issuing paper receipts apart from issuing fine through SMS,” he said.
Moreover, when asked whether the department’s plan to go cashless was a success, the DCP said, “Initially, we tried to claim fines from citizens through debit/credit cards but we confronted a few cases of online payment procedure being faulty. We realised that it is not a hassle-free task to make the citizens pay through cashless means.”
However, the explanation appears as a failure in the preparedness at the level of traffic department.