PANJIM: They are the high priests of the Regional Transport Office. A bunch of agents, actually touts, many of them who run driving schools, and select staff of the RTO, who work with these touts to do the bidding of ‘clients’ who bypass the system and pay bribes, to get work done.
Herald was shocked to see the brazenness with which the parallel, corrupt and illegal system has become THE system at the RTO. There are rates for every job- transfer of car ownership, licence transfer, fresh licences. And the truth came home cold and direct as this reporter went to the RTO to get the ownership papers of a used car bought by a friend to transfer in his name.
When this reporter entered the office of the Additional Director of Transport Tiswadi to get the ownership papers transferred, there was a pincer movement of touts almost squeezing out the option of standing in the long line to the counter where the form for transfers is given out. The standard fee of Rs 400 for this task is trebled in the court of the corrupt. So for Rs 1,200 the new RC book is delivered to you the same evening, only if you have all the necessary documents. The fee to get it done even with missing documents is much higher and we shall tell you how.
This reporter did not pay the Rs 1,200 and decided to go back a couple of days later with most of the documents except the voter ID/Aadhaar card.
The rate quickly changed. For the same job, it was now Rs 4,000. AND the man for the job, this time was not any other hawk agents, but the man himself. He answers to the nom de plume M (initials only). M is actually a staff of the RTO, a government servant, who is a servant only of hard cash.
If cash is your currency then M is your go to guy. He gets anything done, even gets you a taxi badge without a professional driver’s licence.
So back to this reporter’s work. After verifying the documents and finding there is no voter identity card he asked for Rs 4,000 to transfer the ownership of the vehicle and issue a new RC book. “Give me four thousand rupees, the fee is four hundred and three thousand five hundred is for me.” For even a seasoned reporter, the openness of this RTO staffer, in asking for a bribe was unbelievable. And by the way, that still adds to Rs 3,900. The other Rs 100 also belongs to M, as the figure is rounded off.
So let us assume that he does even two cases a day of this nature, he gets Rs 7,000 a day. Multiply that 20 days assuming he doesn’t work weekends, he gets Rs 1.4 lakh a month. And this is just a small fraction of his bribe earnings from other types of “cases”.
The cash was obviously not given and the vehicle ownership has still not been transferred. But this shameless rape of the system happened every hour and every day at the RTO. Why can’t a simple trap be laid to get these agents and RTO staffers. And then see where the trail leads to and it will lead “up”.
