KATHMANDU, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Nepal is moving forward to replace around 2 million paper-based driving licenses with smart driving license within a year, a senior Nepali government official said.
The smart license enables the government authority to end duplication of licences and keep electronic records of vehicles and vehicle owners. Once the card is scanned, cardholder's biometric data, including traffic violations will be displayed automatically, which will help control multiple traffic rules violators.
Roop Narayan Bhattarai, director general of Nepal's Department of Transport Management (DoTM), said on Sunday that they had plans to distribute the smart driving license throughout the country within a year.
The DoTM has already distributed around 200,000 smart driving licenses in Bagmati zone where capital Kathmandu Valley lies.
The Asian Development Bank has been assisting Nepal's drive toward digitalization of the driving license considering the large number of road accidents in the country.
During the first 11 months of the current fiscal year 2016-17, a total of 5,051 road accidents took place in Nepal, killing 168 people, according to the record of Nepal's Traffic Police.
