Scores of vehicle owners in Tema have expressed worry over the frustration they have been subjected to trying to register their vehicles at the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Authority (DVLA), Tema Office. They indicated that their attempt to register their vehicles since Tuesday, January 2, had been met with several bottlenecks.
Mr Narh Tetteh, a motorcycle owner, told the Ghana News Agency that he had been visiting the DVLA office since Tuesday to register his motorcycle, but to no avail.
Mr Tetteh, who had to travel from Ada to the DVLA office in Tema, said information received from DVLA officials on the delays indicated that their online registration system kept breaking, making it difficult for a smooth registration.
He said riding his bike in town had become difficult as Police officers kept accosting him for no fault of his, as his attempts to register for the past three days had been difficult.
Miss Ama Mensah, a car owner, corroborated the claim, saying that for the past three days, various processes of registration had been moving at a very slow pace.
Miss Mensah said even though she conducted the needed vehicle inspection at one of the approved DVLA inspection centres before reporting to the office, it took the whole day of Tuesday to get the Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) to verify clearance documents.
She said generating invoices for payment was another hurdle, indicating that the next step of capturing bio-data had been difficult since the link was not stable.
The vehicle owners expressed worry about why the DVLA decided to do full online vehicle registration during the pick-up period.
They suggested that the online registration should be done alongside the manual one, especially at the beginning of the year when people wanted to register their vehicles.
They said keeping them at the DVLA offices for days was worrying as they also had to go to work.
An official of the DVLA who does not want to be named has confirmed to the GNA that they were having network challenges that they were working to resolve.
He explained that all 38 registration centres were seeking variation from the National Identification Authority (NIA), which could be the reason for the system challenges.
He, however, said vehicle owners could continue using their 2023 DV number plates as those from 2024 were yet to come out, adding that they could however extend their insurance on them for a month while they go through the process of registering.
