DVLA replaces 27,457 old licences

THE Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) has since August last year withdrawn and replaced 27,457 old driver’s licences with the new Ghanaian licence.

Through the replacement exercise which is meant to introduce computer-mediated licence in the country to meet international standards, the authority has also been able to retrieve 60 fake licences and 35 dormant licences for retesting.

Mr Joseph Amamoo, Principal Technical Officer of the DVLA who disclosed this in an interview in Accra yesterday, said 20 other people who applied for a licence were disqualified because they had sight defects which make them unqualified to drive.

Mr Amamoo disclosed that plans are far advanced to set a deadline for the replacement of the private licences (green).

He said the authority is currently meeting with stakeholders to set a date for the deadline and said when the date is set, any driver who is caught using the old licence will be dealt with according to law.

Touching on eye testing as a pre-requisite for obtaining a valid licence, he said the authority has designated some health institutions to exclusively undertake eye testing for applicants.

These include the 37 Military Hospital, Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Ridge Hospital, Police Hospital and other public health centres that have the services of an eye specialists.

Mr Amamoo said the authority was compelled to get tough on the eye testing exercise because many applicants who had poor vision, contacted their doctors to endorse their medical forms.

On the progress made with the institutional visits by the authority, he said 57 institutions have so far been serviced adding that the exercise is in progress.

Mr Amamoo advised new applicants not to deal with any party apart from the post offices in Accra for the payment for an application form and processing fee.

He reiterated the point that the new licence has special security features which cannot be faked by any person.

Mr Amamoo said the new machine-readable licences carry security features, dimensional bar-codes, digital imaging, driver classification and social security number and, can, therefore not be faked.

Under the new system, he said the DVLA has linked up with various post offices, and other offices such as the Accountant General’s Department, where forms could be purchased and with the assistance of staff of the authority, the old licences are examined to determine whether they are genuine or not.

He said the DVLA is also prepared to assist older drivers who, hitherto, were using high categories of licences but are now driving private cars to change over to the new private licence under the new system.