Weed out illegal drivers’ licences for safer roads — Ga Mantse

The Ga Mantse, Nii Tackie Teiko Tsuru II, has urged the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), Julius Neequaye Kotey, to do what is right to correct wrongs at the authority.

Particularly, he underscored the need for urgent steps to be taken to address the illegal acquisition of a driver’s licence to ensure that only qualified drivers use vehicles.

“The situation where someone is a driver’s mate today, and tomorrow you see them driving a car without a licence that qualifies them to drive is a danger to all of us. There are laws to check that, so the laws must be enforced,” he said.

The traditional ruler made the call when Mr Kotey led a team from the DVLA on a courtesy call to his palace at Kaneshie in Accra on Monday (March 17). Mr Kotey’s visit was to officially introduce himself to the Ga Mantse as the new CEO of the DVLA and to seek his blessing to discharge the mandate given to him by President John Dramani Mahama.

Key issues

Special prayers were offered by the Ghana Traditional Council (GTC) for Mr Kotey and other top officials of the DVLA who accompanied him.

During the visit, pertinent issues in the road sector that relates to the DVLA’s mandate such as proper licensing of drivers, enhanced vehicle registration, weeding out quacks in the authority’s activities, and deployment of innovative strategies to bring sanity to the roads were discussed.

Assurance

Mr Kotey assured the Ga Mantse that he would live above reproach and ensure that stricter processes were followed in the acquisition of licences because road safety was largely dependent on the quality of drivers.

He added that efforts would be made to do away with middlemen who abused the vehicle licensing process.

Again, he said appropriate technologies would be leveraged to improve service delivery and also enforce compliance in driver and vehicle licensing.

Road tolls

Mr Kotey added that the DVLA was likely to be the state institution with the mandate to collect road tolls when the policy was reintroduced later this year.

He said the new face of toll collection would see the DVLA deploy innovative strategies and non-cumbersome means to rake in revenue from vehicle plying the country’s roads rather than the old order that created long queues at toll booths.

“Amendments are ongoing, so very soon, you will all know the form the road toll collection will take. I do not want to jump the gun, but I can tell you that DVLA will now be taking the road toll and reporting back to the government,” he added.

Context

Previously, the Ghana Highways Authority (GHA) was in charge of the physical collection of tolls on the roads. Apart from the long queues of vehicles that are created at toll booths, there were also concerns about revenue leakages.

While presenting the 2022 budget to Parliament on November 17, 2021, the Minister of Finance at the time, Ken Ofori-Atta, made known the government’s decision to scrap the collection of road tolls.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Roads and Highways directed the cessation of the collection of road and bridge tolls at all locations nationwide, effective from 12a.m. on Thursday, November 18, 2021.

When conversations resumed under the current government to reintroduce the tolls, many people called for a departure from the physical mode of collecting the road tolls to electronic means.

There have also been suggestions by some institutions and experts that the collection of road tolls needed to be tied to the annual renewal of roadworthy certification and the amount varied according to the vehicle type.