Many people avoid renewing because they have a lot of accumulated, unpaid fines. I know of two myself.
TJ
Renew registration or face confiscation
Shafaat Ahmed
2 April 2010, 10:19 PM
The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is revving up its campaign to make motorists aware of the hazards of not registering their vehicles in time.
The authority has offered several new incentives as well as convenient processes to make re-registration hassle-free for motorists.
With around 80,000 unregistered vehicles plying on Dubai roads — most of whom do not register to avoid paying accumulated fines — the RTA is willing to make some concessions to bring them back to the legal fold.
According to the RTA, individuals who have accumulated fines of Dh5,000 or more can pay them in equal instalments whereas for companies, the accumulated amount should be Dh30,000 or more to be eligible for the instalment scheme.
The vehicle owners have a month’s grace period from the expiry date of previous registration and exceeding the grace period would attract penalties.
The Licensing Agency at the RTA has also come up with several tech-oriented measures to remind the motorists and make the registration process attractive. “The agency has put in place a mechanism whereby the owner of each vehicle is reminded to renew registration of his or her vehicle two weeks before the expiry and one month after the expiry date,” said Abdul Kareem Nimat, Director of the Vehicle Licensing Department.
“The RTA in association with ENOC’s Tasjeel at Al Barsha has also rolled out a service of ‘Renew your vehicle while driving’ to facilitate things further for customers,” added Nimat.
Through ‘Renew your vehicle while driving’ initiative, a vehicle (three years old or less) can be registered in five minutes. These vehicles are exempt from the tests and the drivers are not even required to get off their vehicles. With a valid ID and renewed insurance policy, one can finish the process within no time.
The recent launch of online insurance system has made the process even easier. Following its successful launch of online vehicle and licence registration portal, the RTA recently introduced online insurance process as well, linking almost all insurance providers to its portal. The two e-initiatives combined will smoothen the registration process while saving motorists’ time.
“By launching these two services online, the agency is seeking to save the time and effort for clients, and enable them to process the renewal of vehicle registration from any location, without bothering to attend to any business site, which might involve lengthy waiting time to have such transactions processed,” said Ahmed Hashim Bahrozyan, CEO of the Licensing Agency.
Since the launch of the online registration process last June, the portal has witnessed considerable traffic with over 1,500 transactions processed by the end of last year. Now, with addition of e-insurance, the RTA is expecting over 30 per cent of registration work to be done online by the yearend.
Other measures adopted by the RTA to make life easier for motorists include the extension of the working hours at some licensing centres and offering licensing and registration services all over Dubai such as Tomooh Centre which works 24 hours a day and ENOC Al Qusais which continues the service up to midnight.
According to the statistics provided by the RTA, Dubai witnessed a 2.5 per cent rise in the number of registered vehicles in 2009 — from 996,997 in 2008 to 1,021,880. However, the number of new vehicles registered in the first half of last year dropped considerably compared to the same period in 2008. A total of 85,066 new vehicles were registered in the first six months of 2009 whereas the number of new vehicles registered over the same period in 2008 stood at 147,033.
shafaat@khaleejtimes.com
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