PESHAWAR: KP Minister for Finance, Taimur Salim Jhagra on Friday said that the Excise & Taxation Department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has started issuing universal number plates for vehicles.

He was responding to a question during the question hour of the provincial assembly. He said that the new number plate would have full name of the province. He added that for the facilitation of the people nominal fee would be charged from the applicant.

The provincial minister said that decision has been taken due to various complaints particularly receiving of discriminatory attitude of Islamabad and Punjab police on every picket and people were reluctant to register their vehicles in KP. He urged general public and particularly parliamentarians to get their vehicles registered in KP to improve the image of the province.

On the occasion, Minister for Labour Shaukat Yousafzai said that Excise department has given contract to a private firm for issuance of new number plate and so far 17,000 out of a total 350,000 number plates have been issued.

He said Excise Department was only facilitator in issuance of new number plates and was providing free services, however nominal charges of the number plates are being charged from customer.

He said the department or government had not taken the initiative for revenue generation rather for regulating the system, adding that two containers of aluminum made universal number plates with same serial number have arrived from China.

To a supplementary question of ANP Nisar Mohmand, the minister said that Rs 5000 million were allocated in previous budget for vocational and technical training.

He acknowledged that the vocational centres in the merged districts were short of facilities and measures were being taken to overcome the deficiencies.

To a query of Nighat Orakzai of PPP, he told the house that Rs 509 million were spent during last fiscal year for vocational and technical trainings of youth in South Waziristan, adding that over 300 students got admissions in different disciplines.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022