MARGAO: Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat visited the Road Transport Office (RTO) at Arlem on Wednesday morning, after having received numerous complaints about the hardships faced by members of the public who have been visiting the RTO to replace their High Security Number Plates (HSRP).
After witnessing the commotion and listening to the grievances of the people waiting in the long queues, he took up the matter with the Transport Minister and Transport Director.
He also spoke to Assistant Directors Prakash Kholkar and Vinod Arlekar, where he pointed out that there are no separate queues for senior citizens and persons with disability and asked that separate queues be set up for them immediately.
While stating that it is difficult for the senior citizens and persons with disability to climb to the first floor where the number plates are given, he asked that four counters be set up on the ground floor, with one counter for senior citizens, one for persons with disability and two for the general public.
The former chief minister, also referred to the complaints from the public, about how the number plates of vehicles registered with the Quepem office of RTO are being fitted at Margao. He suggested that Quepem public should be able to get this work done at Tilamol instead or any other suitable place closer to Quepem and not in Margao, which is already so congested.
He also demanded that the system should be streamlined so that an applicant spends maximum 15 minutes to get his number plate changed. While giving the examples of how people in the queue had to suffer as they had other matters to attend to, he wondered why it was taking nearly three hours to change the plate.
The Margao MLA also asked the officials to speed up the work and fix at least 400 number plates per day as against the present rate of fixing 250 plates per day.
He also spoke to Transport Minister Mauvin Godinho and Transport Director Rajan Satardekar over the phone about the problems faced by the people.
Moreover, members of the public present as well as those, who have been visiting the Transport Department to get their respective HSRPs, have been complaining about the hardships they have faced. Sometimes, just to get the appointment itself takes a lot of time and they have to bear with repeated delays. They questioned why there’s only one person dealing with all the applications submitted.
Further, while the RTO states that they have asked the vendors to appoint at least one more person, the vendors point out that as they have been allotted only one counter they cannot appoint more staff.
At the Arlem RTO office, on an average everyday around 300 applications are received. However, given the fact that all those who have numbers from 0 to 1000 have to procure the HSRP this month and there is only one person to deal with all the applications while another person allots numbers to the applicants, there are plenty of delays.
A staff member said they are willing to appoint another person but that there is no counter for the second person to attend to the public. The staff member added that unless the RTO gives them another counter the present situation will continue as it is.
