Senior citizens in Lahore are facing long waits for driving licence processing amid stricter medical certificate checks and reported tensions within the city traffic police. Officials and the department have offered differing accounts of the disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
LAHORE: Senior citizens seeking driving licences in Lahore have been facing prolonged delays at licencing centres, with officials citing confusion over the verification of medical fitness certificates and tensions between office staff and field personnel within the city traffic police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to an official, service delivery has been disrupted by internal differences between staff at the chief traffic officer (CTO) office and field officials. He said wardens had allegedly slowed the licencing process, leaving elderly applicants waiting for hours in intense heat at centres across the city for authentication of their fitness certificates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The official said some reports indicated that traffic personnel posted at most licencing and testing centres had effectively stopped processing licences for applicants aged 50 and above who arrived with mandatory medical fitness certificates issued by authorised medical practitioners. He said the situation worsened after CTO Lahore suspended several traffic officials over complaints that driving licences had been issued to senior citizens on the basis of bogus medical certificates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same official said field wardens believed some staff members posted in vigilance centres had manipulated complaints by submitting fabricated reports to target rivals. He said Lahore currently has 30 Khidmat Marakaz, licencing, testing and facilitation centres, including facilities at Arfa Karim Tower, Liberty Market, Manawan, DHA, Bahria Town, Wapda Town, Ichhra, Garden Town, Kahna, Iqbal Town, Cantt, Railway Station, Raiwind Road, Mozang and Township.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said doctors had been posted only at two centres \u2014 Manawan and Liberty Market \u2014 to examine senior citizens and verify their medical certificates, while no such facility had been provided at the remaining centres. According to him, traffic staff at those locations had not been given any detailed mechanism to verify certificates issued by medical practitioners at government hospitals in Lahore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The official said it was not humanly possible for a warden to determine the authenticity of signatures and stamps merely through visual inspection, describing that task as a form of forensic examination. He said identifying genuine and forged signatures fell within the domain of a forensic expert who could assess structural and habitual characteristics of handwriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He alleged that, taking advantage of this gap, vigilance staff had placed bogus medical certificate cases involving selective traffic officials before the CTO, who had been recently posted and was unaware of internal politics and rifts within the department. He added that the CTO had also suspended a dozen other wardens on multiple complaints based on reports prepared by vigilance staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the official, some wardens were suspended after being seen speaking to drivers on roadsides and were accused of taking bribes. He said those wardens had in fact issued fines for traffic violations and were guiding motorists on how to pay online through banking apps after cash payments were banned. He added that many motorists were unfamiliar with the digital payment system, under which fines are paid using an 18-digit Payment System Identifier (PSID), and in some cases drivers took five to seven minutes to understand the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The official further alleged that vigilance staff had been exploiting such situations to target rival officials, and claimed that blackmail and bribery by influential vigilance personnel against field staff had persisted in the city traffic police for years. He said 193 field officials were currently serving at centres across Lahore, including 178 licencing staff members, and many of them were facing alleged blackmail and harassment by certain vigilance cell staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief Traffic Officer Abdul Raheem Sherazi did not respond to repeated calls and text messages from the reporter, according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A spokesperson for the city traffic police said the wardens were suspended after initial irregularities were found in medical certificates submitted for commercial driving licences. He said several certificates did not carry clear signatures of the relevant doctors or valid Registered Medical Practitioner numbers. In some cases, he added, the RMP numbers were incomplete or unclear, making proper verification of the doctor\u2019s identity and the certificate\u2019s authenticity impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The spokesperson said three medical certificates issued from Mian Munshi DHQ Hospital had recently been received in which the doctors\u2019 names, RMP numbers and official details appeared valid and verified. However, he said applicants carrying those certificates were found during physical examination at the licencing centre to have vision-related problems, including impaired eyesight in one eye, despite having been declared medically fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Every medical certificate is now thoroughly verified, including confirmation of the doctor\u2019s RMP number, while applicants are also physically assessed to determine their ability to walk, see, and safely operate a vehicle,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The spokesperson said a driving licence was issued only after complete satisfaction and verification by the licencing in-charge to ensure road safety and protect human lives. He did not address the wardens\u2019 concerns about the absence of a system to verify original signatures and stamps of medical practitioners against forged ones, or the allegations of internal rifts within the department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senior citizens in Lahore are facing long waits for driving licence processing amid stricter medical certificate checks and reported tensions within the city traffic police. Officials and the department have offered differing accounts of the disruption. LAHORE: Senior citizens seeking driving licences in Lahore have been facing prolonged delays at licencing centres, with officials citing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policy-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7401,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7399\/revisions\/7401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanaffairs.com.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}