DVLA’s mandatory towing fees: Excuse me!

By Voice of Reason.

WHAT about putting DVLA offices in every district capital and make DVLA paperless?

No doubt, many of my readers are as tired of reading about wacky ideas our policymakers dish out every day, as I’m of writing about them, but like a dog with a bone, I have to keep worrying it .

Yes, someone has to. Over my life, I have heard so many bizarre things and ideas, but not quite as crazy as the one about National towing fees for vehicle owners which has been proposed.

On top of it, DVLA is planning to increase Driving Licenses fees. The question is: why do we make things harder and complicated every time we want to dupe the consumers or customers and citizenry?

Of course, we should demand for road safety remedies, but more importantly we need to demand DVLA decentralization and better customer service. Having more diverse DVLA locations in our localities is the surest (and perhaps only) way to prevent the cutthroat fees we pay at DVLA and time –consuming process of vehicle registration we go through.

Those of us who were fortunate to spend a little bit time outside Ghana know that when your car breaks down in United States, either you the owner tow it to the earliest car repair garage or the police will tow it for you, with a heavy price tag. Once your car is towed by the police you will pay the towing fee plus the storage fee. The juicy part of it is if you don’t pay after some time the vehicle will be auctioned off.

And if the money from the sale doesn’t cover all the cost of the bill from the police the court will go to the owner’s bank account and withdraw the balance without any question—the I’m not kidding you! After that, insurance surcharge will be applied to your insurance payment. Car towing is not part of the duties of DVLA.

The picture I’m trying to paint here is it’s the vehicle owner’s responsibility to see to it that towing and storage fees are paid on time because the outcome is too troublesome and uncomfortable to take it for granted. It’s also the owner’s responsibility to see to it that his/her vehicle is in top shape all the time so that it won’t break down on the highway.

If DVLA officials want to make a difference in clearing and cleaning up the broken vehicles on our road network, it should let the vehicle owners stomach the cost of their vehicles—from the maintenance to towing. By the way, what about the government’s vehicles that are left in the middle of the roads?

For me, the most shocking thing about this proposal is that nothing was said about how to improve the services of DVLA so as to make Ghanaians inhale a little bit fresh air .If you lived somewhere at Otwenkwanta and you have to register your car at DVLA in koforidua, you will appreciate me for bringing this issue up.

In this day and age when everyone can virtually send money to any part of the country without any difficulty, how come the DVLA can’t decentralize its registration and license offices? What about making it possible for Ghanaians to register their vehicles in every district capital?

Not to compare miseries—since many Ghanaians are catching hell because of bad policies from our lousy policy makers—vehicle owners continue to get the shittest end of the stick. Apart from the sky high cost of spare parts, and constant police harassment, our pot-hole infected roads are adding insult to injury. And now comes the towing fees.

Now before anyone starts coming up with all of reasons why DVLA offices can’t be located in district capitals or how someone can cheat the system, please take a deep breath and then go take a class in basic computer science. The technology is one -hundred percent fool proof.

Even the sakawa boys couldn’t rig the system—not that they would want to. The only thing that can prevent such an exercise in true democracy and market oriented economy is lack of will on the part of the politicians who run the ‘system’.

I guess in this part of our world nothing is important to our policy makers as long as it makes some few individuals billionaires and Zillionaires in a short possible time.

Let’s stop playing games with Ghanaians’ thinking faculties and rather put DVLA offices in every district capital and go paperless because some of us can read between the lines.

Until we meet again, stay Tuned. Be blessed, educated and informed. Kwaku Adu-Gyamfi (Voice of Reason)