Al-Rai city, north of Aleppo, is witnessing an increasing demand for the registration of private and public vehicles, within the project of the Directorate of Transportation aiming to put the traffic into order.
The demand came after the directorate opened registration for all vehicles, including lorries, agricultural machinery, and motors in both the private and public sectors.
The Head of the al-Rai Transportation Directorate, Walid Ahmad Bakour, stated to Enab Baladi that “the vehicle registration is an organizational project seeking to maintain security by monitoring the license plate numbers and vehicles via the Directorate’s computers.”
“On the 7th of last July, we began registering the citizens’ vehicles and motors. The turnout was decent and unpredictable, for the directorate is a safety valve for owners and their vehicles, protecting them from theft and tampering,” he added.
Until early August 2019, the number of registered vehicles amounted to about 720 public and private vehicles, as well as pickup trucks, motorcycles, medium and large trucks, harvesters and heavy engineering vehicles among others, according to Bakour.
The Directorate of Transportation mandated that all the area’s residents register their vehicles.
In the past a few months, the local councils in Aleppo’s northern countryside, controlled by the Syrian opposition, have organized the automobile markets by opening driving courses, providing the drivers with licenses and legal documents.
The organizational steps began with the local councils’ launching the process of licensing vehicles and providing them with number plates in the area’s cities to regulate traffic, limit accidents and minimize thefts.
The area was suffering from randomness and lacking supervision of the transportation sector and automobile markets.
Part of project to cover the whole area
Last June 2019, the local councils of al-Rai and Akhtarin cities in the northern countryside of Aleppo determined the registration fees for large and small vehicles and agricultural machinery.
The annual registration renewal fee for touring small cars ranges from 85 to 105 Turkish lira, according to the engine’s capacity.
For lorries and shipping vehicles, the yearly registration fee is 150 TL for vehicles weighing less than three tons, 205 TL for those weighing between three to 11 tons, and 300 TL for those weighing more than 11 tons.
The annual registration fee for a tractor is 50 TL and 250 TL for the agricultural harvester, while the annual registration fee of the engineering equipment and heavy machinery of all kinds is 500 TL and the motorcycles’ is 20 TL.
Besides, 50 TL is added to the registration fee as the price of the number plate, in addition to 25 TL as the cost of the driver’s license which is usually added to the first registration fee for each vehicle.
On August 4, 2019, one TRY is exchanged for 107 Syrian pounds, according to Pound Currency Today Site, specialized in currency rates.
The two councils called on vehicle owners to register their vehicles in the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and after September 1, 2019, necessary seizing measures will be taken against the unregistered vehicles.
In addition to the security-related advantages, the registration of vehicles and providing them with number plates will trigger new potentials, for Syrians’ vehicles will be capable of moving between Turkey and rural Aleppo, especially locomotives and cargo trucks. All these measures fall within the frame of a central network addressing vehicles, which official local departments in rural Aleppo share with the Turkish provinces managing the areas (Kalas, Gaziantep, Hatay).