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Benefits of the new system

The Malawi Government decided to embark on the process of upgrading the system after noting that the old system had, in the recent past, been experiencing challenges due to the increase in demand for services as a result of the ever-increasing number of vehicles and drivers in the country.

The objective of the upgrade is, therefore, to improve on the efficiency and transparency in our provision of services to the general.

One of the benefits of the system upgrade that we can easily demonstrate is the ability to print driving licences on the same day soon after going through the necessary procedures for renewal or road test if it is a learner driver. Whilst in the old system, one had to wait weeks, or months on end to collect their driving licence, now licence collection is instant and has been decentralised. Every one of our offices is now printing its own driving licences for its applicants.

Entity registration is another process that has raised a lot of queries from our clients. For the sake of those who don’t know by now, entity registration process refers to the enrolment of individuals and companies into the system after which individuals are given entity registration cards while companies are given entity registration certificates.

The entity registration process is a new business process, which the system requires every individual/organisation to be enrolled into the system first to be able to process any transaction in the system. The purpose of entity registration is for the Department of Road Traffic and Safety Services (DRTSS) to link all the records of every individual/ company to a specified identity number generated by the system, to be able to verify and authenticate every entity when processing the entity’s respective transaction.

This process will enhance security of your property in that no one can make any transaction in respect of your fleet if not authorised by you (proxy). Before this system, the directorate used to receive cases whereby individuals were robbed of their property through fraudulent means where thieves would easily change ownership of a vehicle without the owners’ knowledge. This was possible because people were creating multiple Identity numbers in the old system.

Another benefit of the new system is that it will promote transparency and accountability as well as proper reconciliation of transactions in the system and money deposited at the bank by our clients seeking various road traffic documents. While in the old system we still collected payment through the bank, the bank was not particularly linked to the system as such some individuals were taking advantage of this by acquiring our services without payment. The new system has made this pilferage practically impossible in that all documents produced by the system will have been duly paid through bank deposits. The system is set up in a way that it cannot produce any road traffic document if the document has not been paid for. The bank and the system are now linked.

Linking with the Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) and the Malawi Police Service (MPS) is another plus to the Malawi Government. MRA, MPS and DRTSS became increasingly aware of some cases of tax evasion by some unpatriotic Malawians who would bring imported vehicles into the country and the evade customs duty. These individuals would then proceed to bring fraudulent documentation to DRTSS for vehicle registration.

It, therefore, became apparent that the only way to curb this malpractice was to introduce a system which will interface with all three institutions to ensure that there is compliance in terms of customs clearance and police clearance. In short, listed below are the practical benefits of the system;

(a)   Enable automation of existing links with external systems necessary for Malawi Traffic Information System (MalTIS) operations like banks, MRA, insurance companies and MPS.

(b)   Improve road safety through making sure that every driver on the roads of Malawi is indeed competent and qualified to drive the category of vehicle he or she is driving and also making sure that eye test and aptitude tests are duly administered to improve and enhance road safety knowledge.

(c)   E-traffic management where the system will embrace new technologies to enhance traffic management by electronically identifying traffic violations, fines and authenticating all output documents such as certificate of fitness (COF), local and International road service permits and driving licence cards.

(d)   Enhance security by producing documentation with advanced security features that cannot be forged or replicated by fraudsters.

(e)   Promote transparency by tracking all transactions performed by users and administrators and also generating transaction audit trail reports.

 

New features in MalTIS

  1. Entity registration, traffic registration card (for individuals), traffic registration certificate (for companies)
  2. PRDP application and renewal are processed as separate transactions from the normal driving licence in line with sections 24 and 47 of the Road Traffic Act 1997.
  3. Automated/computerised eye test
  4. Automated/computerised high way code
  5. MalTIS, MRA, Interpol, bank interface
  6. Driving schools interface.n

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