Sir,
The renewal of driving licence (DL) at the RTO office is the worst experience in one’s life, particularly for a senior citizen.
My driving licence due date for renewal was nearing and I had no option except to visit the RTO office in Mysore one month in advance to get it renewed.
My experience started with obtaining a health certificate from a doctor at the crowded Government Hospital, Jayanagar. After the health certificate, I had to go to the browsing centre situated behind the RTO office to get the renewal application filled up online along with scanning of health certificate, photo, signature and Aadhaar card and forwarding it to the RTO online with generating of an ID number.
While applying online, another problem arose with the DL number mentioned on the smart card and the date of birth not tallying (error occurred while uploading the data into computers by the RTO). After verifying with the computer data from RTO, the online system accepted the new data for renewal (mine was the second case of error in data feeding).
Later, a hard copy of print out was taken out from the browsing centre on payment of Rs.100 after which the real ordeal started of moving from one queue to the other paying cash, for photograph and another to submit the application. The whole exercise took me more than two hours.
Is this the way the RTO gives customer service, particularly to a senior citizen? Hence, most feel that it is better to pay money to a middleman and get the work done than face the ordeal.
On one side the RTO boasts that online facilities have been provided to make the work easier, but they have not prevented people standing in long queues at different counters to get the work done. Shortage of staff due to non-recruitment is also said to be one of the reasons for keeping only one counter open resulting in long queues.
If the RTO is really interested in easing the situation, he should allow the online applications along with online payment so that the rush could be reduced and the applications processed with the existing staff itself.
Let the RTO give relief to customers particularly senior citizens, women and physically challenged by opening a separate single window counter.
– K.V. Ramanath, Srirampura II Stage, 29.8.2018
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This post was published on September 2, 2018 6:02 pm