The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) wants to raise funds from the capital market to finance its ambitious expansion plans to better serve Ghanaians.

But the Authority wants the Act establishing it, Act 569, reviewed to allow it undertake the raising of funds.

“Every district in Ghana should have a DVLA facility but that requires money. We have to invest in technology, equipment but with the Act in its current stage we cannot do that,” CEO, Ing. Noble John Appiah told the B&FT.

“With a review of the Act establishing the Authority we can then go to the capital market and raise money to expand our works,” he said.

Speaking at a media engagement which came off at the Forest Hotel, Dodowa, Mr. Appiah, explained that with various infrastructural projects in the pipeline, the DVLA wants to open offices in all district capitals by the year 2026.

With only 329 staff nationwide in 11 regional offices, 13 district offices, three collaborative partnerships with Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, and 10 other partnerships with private companies, the DVLA boss wants the authority to be very visible and this visibility depends on further investments.

Partially taken off government subvention, the DVLA is now allowed to keep a percentage of its internally generated income. Noble Appiah believes, however, that the authority would need other sources of funding to serve the public better.

“We want regional and district offices to be operated as profit centres; reward for innovation and creativity; invest in cutting edge technology; advance training and testing of drivers of specialised vehicle like heavy duty vehicles and hazardous goods vehicles,” he said.

The DVLA used the media engagement to fill journalists in on its strategy plan, how it is delivering its mandate and the strategic direction to reposition and respond to the needs of customers.

Noble Appiah said the authority is seeking to integrate all of its ICT systems to achieve coherent and comprehensive IT system, achieve ISO certification by the year 2021, allocate 3percent of revenue for human capital development and heavily invest in research.

It also intends to digitise all vehicle records from 1995 to date. “About 2million records will be captured and this project is expected to be completed by August this year.”

Mr. Appiah said the Authority intends to acquire and introduce a web-based driver licence capturing system which will be launched next month.

Activities in 2016

In 2016, the DVLA is introducing a new product to capture tertiary students before they leave school. Dubbed ‘TertDRIVE’ this project will from September 2016 enable tertiary students across the country to be able to obtain genuine driving licences before graduating.

Under the project, more than 500,000 students are expected to be registered, trained and given driving licences annually. Mr Appiah said a research conducted by the DVLA revealed that most employers preferred to engage the services of graduates with driving licences.

"Graduates who have driving licences have an advantage of securing jobs because companies do not want to spend extra money to acquire a driver to drive the person," adding that, “we will partner the 230 registered driving schools in Ghana to execute the project annually.”

Elimination of ‘Goro Boys’

The DVLA is still working on getting rid of illegal contractors popularly known as ‘Goro Boys’ who take advantage of the delays in the system to extort monies from licence applicants. From next month, the DVLA will introduce a concerted and targeted campaign to drastically reduce and eliminate ‘Goro Boys’.

Known as GoroZERO, this campaign will see the DVLA use technology, working practices, processes and procedures, customer service, media campaign and enforcement to eradicate these ‘Goro Boys.

Mr. Appiah assured that from July it would not take more than two weeks for any Ghanaian who is going through all the process to get a driver’s license, because “we’ve got the capacity, the solution for it… so that once you go through the driving test and you’ve done all the biometrics and others it won’t take more than two weeks to get the license.

It is something we’ve committed ourselves to do and we’ve made the promise and we’ll stick to that,” he said.