The News Craving
Staff ReportSrinagar
If you thought that why road mishaps are on rise the answer could be that the driver mayn’t have passed a test. With the issuing of driving licenses in northern Kashmir area of Baramulla being looked into by Anti Corruption Bureau, the rot lies deeper.
Even as the Regional Transport Officer (RTO ) has asked people not to pay bribe he needs to look within. The people are largely paying bribe for any service at the ARTO office to avoid spending more money on following up the work. While taking bribe for driving licenses at Baramulla is one instance of corruption, officials at the ARTO office Budgam have been keeping the re-registration of vehicles pending in a bid to extract bribe.
Activists and drivers said ” a work pending is an invitation for bribe. The officials work like touts to further sublet their work to other touts and agents.”
“They are all touts. They work like a criminal mafai,” said RTI activist, Sirajudin Salam, who alerted the ACB leading to registration of case in the corrupt practices at ARTO office Baramulla. “The officials told me that they don’t keep the video recordings of the driving tests. Some got licenses without appearing for test,” he said. ” The sad part is that people die due to road mishaps and the driver gets exonerated as he has a license though it is a murder,” he added.
The delay in issuing fitness certificates and registrations at offices like the ARTO office Budgam have come in flagrant violation of preventive vigilance rules which specify that keeping the works pending is as “good as taking bribe”.
” If the government doesn’t want the corruption it can simply curb it by using CCTV cameras to monitor office work,” said RTI activist Raja Muzafar Bhat.
Salam added that, “The touts and agents operate at ARTO offices and accessing the CCTV footages can help government find out frequent visitors and thereby nab the agents.”
However given the levels of corruption, it looks that this is a remote priority for senior officials of Transport department. The ARTO offices largely operate from run-down rented places. A twitter user, Mir Irshad, described RTO office as “den of corruption” but added that there has been a visible change recently.
Though in a recent order the government brought in new faces to function as ARTO’s, the order only pointed to the rot that existed. The charge of ARTO Pulwama had been additionally handled by ARTO Shopian.
RTO Kashmir, Sajid Yahya Naqash, however said that delay in disposal of files at ARTO office Budgam will be looked into.