NESHWIN ALMEIDA
neshwin@herald-goa.com
At 11.15 am it’s working hours at the Margao’s RTO office and the hope for all visitors is to gather some info on forms needed for sale of vehicle, and other services at the transport department office.
The RTO officer, Percy Rodrigues, at the counter tells Herald that there is a queue system at the office. People try to get into a queue for inquiry, only to realise that next one has to enter a queue again to physically buy the forms and then into another to get the forms checked and then into another for payment of fees. People find it hard to absorb the haphazardness of this office and are often stunned people almost get into fisticuffs for getting again in the cash counter queue only to pay a balance amount of Rs 20 for his / her learning licence application.
“I got to this office at 9 am to make my way to the cash counter only at 10.50 am to learn that the counter doesn’t accept a card and hence for Rs 20 change, I had to rush an ATM and then got abused to cutting the line to pay my balance Rs 20. But this is usual at the Margao RTO Office,” explains Venky Sagar, who’s desperate to complete his RTO Paper work to sell the bike early.
The office with over 500 applications a day to pay road taxes, road cess, register new and old vehicles, sale of vehicles, passenger tax and other clearances and our premises is too small while head office Panjim doesn’t speak about a new office premises yet, exclaims Assistant Director of Transport Prakash Kholkar.
Kholkar and his few officers also blame people’s reluctance to use the Vahann App set up by the Ministry of Road Transport which is what can be used to pay road taxes and even passenger tax by bus operators but Kholkar explains to Herald that people are reluctant to use the facility and hence the crowd increases at the office.
The Assistant Director of Transport, however, has a very strange logic for not making forms online. He actually says forms will be “misused” and there will be loss of revenue since forms are charged, “We actually accept cash till 5.30 pm only to ease the crowd on the same day and avoid people from coming back the next day. Again if we make forms available online, there will be misuse of forms or loss of revenue since we charge for forms to avoid misuse,” stated Kholkar. Doesn’t Kholkar realise that it’s better to add the cost of the forms to the fees rather than avoid making forms available online?
But the bigger problem is that the lack of staff since RTO Officers who double up at the office also go for driving tests in the morning and the delay in queues means people don’t want to waste their day and time and hence venture to touts and agents outside the RTO office along the filthy stairway landings of the Osia Complex at Margao.
“The worst part of the cash counter is the lack of card facility despite the government’s push for a digital economy. So basically vehicle dealers charge a premium mark-up fee to register your vehicle but if you skip that then you have to carry cash between Rs 15,000 to even Rs one lakh and that too stand in a queue for a long duration and if no change then join the line from behind or get verbally or even physically abused by irked people in the queue,” explains Reena Dessai one of the many people in the queues at the office.
Kholkar says that the RTO head office in Panjim is yet to adopt Sarti, the online portal for people to make payments through debit and credit cards and the only option of cashless payment is paying at a bank through a tax challan which means that the person has to return back with the challan and stand in a queue to authenticate the payment.
