not available online and, on this SMS, service and all the process of token tax was manual.
Now after the shutdown of 9966 service, people have to go to the post offices of their respective cities and then come back to excise office to provide the evidence of their token submission as the online database is no more available on SMS portal of 9966. A senior official of the Excise on the condition of anonymity told The News that it was a great challenge for the Excise Department to collect all the manual data available in registers only with the post offices and then to post it online in a very short time. He said the most of the registers’ record was in a dilapidated condition but the department officers got their scanned copies and posted their data on online servers for the SMS portal. He said the entire 9966 portal was closed down just to facilitate the agent mafia and their allies working in Motor Branch E&T.
He said the E&T Punjab got 12 percent plus revenue for fiscal year of 2014, 1200 million rupees than 2013. Several thousands were spent on the advertisement of 9966 campaign which now had totally been dumped.
It was the first time in the Excise Department’s history that postal offices token tax data had been computerised besides the data of 350,000 stolen vehicles was also posted on this online SMS portal with the help of the Punjab police, he added.
When DG E&T Punjab Ahmed Aziz Tarrar contacted, he told The News that eight months ago the service of 9966 portal was shut down as its compiling agency PRAL was no more in working condition.
DG Excise Ahemd Aziz added that now the department had now a new SMS portal 8786 which was being run by the PITB but surprisingly when an SMS was sent to 8786, there was no reply regarding any vehicle information but a spam message of some website was received after sometime. The reply came from 8786 stated “Alert! You have entered the invalid keyword. For help, write to adminmad.com.pk www.mad.com.pk”.