Locating the office is a big problem
You can buy a car and learn to drive, but the office that issupposed to put you in the drivers’ seat, is difficult to find and if you do,it doesn’t always deliver your registration or your license on time.
Although the office is situated in the Kadamba bus standpremises, there is no proper sign board displayed outside the RTO. Often peoplevisiting the RTO have to waste time in search of the office.
Once you do find the office, you need to figure out who toapproach, depending on your needs. That isn’t easy either.
“There is no proper help desk in so that can find out whatwork is carried out on which window,” said Sarvesh Veluskar, who had to face atough time to register his new vehicle.
The next hurdle is the serpentine queues and an overcrowdedoffice. The Assistant Director of Transport office (RTO) of Panjim, whichserves more than 1.5 lakh population, is always congested due to lack of space.The office space is so small that at times the motor vehicle inspectors andassistant motor vehicle inspectors find it difficult to even sit. “We feelsorry about the situation and as the inspectors suffer silently,” said NitinNarse, who had recently visited the office.
Many times the server, which was installed for smooth onlinefunctioning goes down making life of waiting public miserable.
In such situations, it becomes difficult for people, whoneed to pay registration fees, road tax, passenger tax and other fees. What’sworse, is that all fees and taxes have to paid in cash. which means that often,citizens come to the office with thousands of rupees in cash, a completelyunsafe option.
Similarly the enforcement wing of the RTO is in total mess.
Although the enforcement wing issues challans worththousands of rupees every day all over the North district, they insist that thefines have to be paid in Panjim office. “Since there is no facility ofaccepting cash in the Panjim RTO, they send people either to Junta house orother office,” informed Gajendra Pednekar, a bus owner from Mapusa.
Quite often people who come to pay fines, fees or taxes haveto invariably wait for long till the concerned inspector comes to the office.Moreover there is no proper facility like a waiting room or toilets. The officewinds up the process of registration of new vehicles at 3.30pm affecting those,who come in the second half of the day.
Assistant Director of Transport, Prakash Azavedo said thatthe space issue would be sorted out in the next six months. “We are in theprocess of renovating the entire office, which will take at least another sixmonths. Work has already begun,” he said.
He further said that the server network problem was beyondthe preview of his office.
