Transporters facing issues in obtaining fitness certificate
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, November 11 2021:
Transporters are facing difficulty in obtaining online PUC certificate due to lack of pollution testing machine in the state.
However, the transport department is imposing late fine on vehicle owners, who managed to get the online PUC certificate from other states.
Owners of several heavy trucks, tankers and buses told The People's Chronicle that the Government of India relaxed the mandatory fitness certificate for vehicles up to October this year due to Covid-19 pandemic.
As the relaxation period lapsed last month, the transport department is imposing penalty from the beginning of November.
Fitness certificate is very important for vehicles, especially for those who are providing inter-state services.
As per latest guidelines of the ministry, a vehicle should be registered with national register e-service in its portal 'Vaahan' to get fitness certificate.
Online PUC certificate is needed for registration in the portal without which no fitness certificate could be issued.
However, the state's transport department does not have the machine needed for issuing online PUC certificate and as such, vehicle owners are forced to get the PUC certificate from other states, which is a time consuming and costly process.
Even after getting the online PUC certificate from other states, the transport department impose late fine of Rs 50 per day, the vehicle owners lamented.
Terming the policy as unjustifiable, considering the failure of the transport department to install the necessary machine, the vehicle owners appealed to the authority to consider the situation and give some relaxations.
Though the state pollution control board has one emission fitness testing machine, it is not registered on Vaahan portal and as such, pollution free certificate issued by the board is not accepted in other states, they said, while appealing to the state government and transport department to install the required machine and stop imposing late fine until the machine is installed.