12 lakh smart driving cards are printed, more than half the cards are distributed

As the bottleneck of smart driving license has been removed, the printing of the 1.2 lakh driver's license has been completed which had been stuck for long time. More than half of those smart license cards have already been delivered. BRTA Director and Spokesperson Mahbub-e-Rabbani said, the delivery of the rest is in progress. According to Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) sources, the authority started issuing smart driving license from 2016. BRTA signed an agreement with Tiger IT that year under the terms of supply of 15 lakh licenses in 5 years. But by September 2019, Tiger IT printed 14 lakh licenses. At this time, BRTA stopped issuing licenses systematically and started issuing only emergency licenses. Due to this, about 14 lakh renewal and new license applications were submitted in 20 months from September 2019 to May 2021. However, BRTA could not provide the licenses as applied for. In the meantime, BRTA signed an agreement with the Indian company 'Madras Security Printers Private Limited' to supply 40 lakh driving licenses. The company began printing and delivering new licenses and renewal applications that were submitted after the deal. Just as they did not have the capacity to provide more, the previous company Tiger IT was also accused of not providing information. Due to this, in the 20 months from September 2019 to May 2021, about 1.2 lakh license applications were pending. BRTA also called for three-round tenders to contract with new firms for supply of these licenses. But the matter got stuck due to the case. However, in the meantime, Tiger IT handed over the data stored in its database to BRTA. Later, the DPM job was given to Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory Limited (BMTFL), a state-owned enterprise run by the army. However due to pandemic, they could not bring the machines from Germany on time so the start of work was a bit delayed. In such circumstances, Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory (BMTF) Limited printed and handed over 11 lakh 70 thousand driver's licenses stuck in September to BRTA. Now these smarts licenses are being distributed. Out of this, 11 lakh drivers have already been informed about the delivery schedule of their cards through SMS. Sending SMS to the rest is in progress. Apart from SMS, cards are also being given by contacting the respective circles. More than 7 lakh cards have already been distributed.