Kweku Agyeman Busia, CEO, DVLA
The Driver & Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) says it’s undertaking some special initiatives to ease the processes one has to go through to acquire driver’s licence.
Kafui Semevor, Deputy Director of Driver Training, Testing and Licensing (DTTL) at DVLA, who disclosed this at a media engagement at Elmina over the weekend, said the initiatives include the DVLA express mobile service under which DTTL staff can offer selected services to the customers at their doorsteps upon request and also the TertDrive Project under which students in tertiary institutions, who apply for drivers’ licences, are catered for in their school premises.
Mr. Semevor said the DVLA was introducing the Prestige and Premium Services which would allow licence renewal applicants to choose how fast they want their applications to be done for them either in a day, two weeks or the normal process.
Again, he said DVLA was working to soon introduce Ghanaian languages in driver testing and a policy for the training and testing of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs).
These, according to him, were all part of efforts by DVLA to simplify licence application processes through the use of cutting-edge technologies to reduce congestion and turn-around time and face- to-face human interactions to ensure efficiency and transparency.
He said a recent survey on challenges faced by clients of DVLA revealed that corruption, delays and long bureaucracy when accessing DVLA’s services were rampant.
Noting that there were a total of 1,357,083 licensed drivers, he said from November 2017 to February 2019, DVLA printed 283,680 drivers’ licences, indicating that there are a total of 318 certified driving schools with 937 licensed driving instructors.
He also touched on some new features that have been introduced in the acquisition of drivers’ licence.
These include the introduction of a contactless chip for storage of biodata and personal driver information; a unique design and improved security and guaranteed security of card and data.
George Ackom, Director, Vehicle Inspection and Registration (VIR), in a presentation, said between 1995 and March 2016, a total of 1,992,983 vehicles had been registered in Ghana including 2,498 construction equipment and 172 mining equipment.
It also included 3,224 customised vehicles between 2001 and 2018.
Explaining further, Mr. Ackom mentioned that his outfit has digitized all vehicle records from 1995 to date.
He said records of approximately 2.4 million vehicles were also being digitized, adding that under vehicle e-registration, Electronic Vehicle Registration System (VRS) would be piloted in Accra 37, Tema, Weija and head office.”
Other projects include the implementation of registration of heavy-duty, commercial trailers (and semi-trailers), extension of vehicle testing stations to other areas in the country, collaboration with Ghana Highway Authority on the axle weigh stations and collaboration with EPA on the implementation of the Vehicle Exhaust Emission Test.
From Samuel Boadi, Elmina