It is five days now since the Malawi Transport Information System (Maltis) at Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services crashed, leaving motorists inconvenienced.
The system malfunction has made production of driving licences, certificate of fitness (CoF) and other services impossible.
Checks at the directorate’s offices in Blantyre, Mzuzu and Zomba found the premises nearly empty, an unusual sight given that the places are usually full of people seeking services.
A service seeker who did not want to be named said he had trav-elled from Chilomoni Township in Blantyre to change ownership of a vehicle, but was advised to go back as the network glitches would not be resolved soon.
Ministry of Transport and Public Works spokesperson Watson Maingo confirmed in an interview yesterday that the Maltis platform was not working nationwide since January 6.
“Our technicians from within the ministry and the DRTSS are work-ing on the system and are expecting that it will be restored any-time, either today or tomorrow,” he said.
On how drivers whose permits have expired are being helped, Maingo said the focus now is on restoring the system as soon as pos-sible.
But Minibus Owners Association of Malawi general secretary Coaxley Kamange expressed concern yesterday that drivers with newly expired licences and CoF risk being fined during traffic stops.
“Our plea is that whenever the system shuts down, drivers with expired documents due to system challenges should be issued with temporary documents which they can use on the roads,” he said.
Commenting on the issue, Malawi Police Service national deputy director of traffic Alexander Moyo said while they are yet to be offi-cially informed about the system malfunction, traffic police officers will be considering affected drivers.
“We cannot penalise a driver whose licence or CoF expired over the past week since we know that they cannot renew the docu-ment in the meantime,” he said.
Last month, the directorate also experienced network challenges at its regional office in Blantyre which led to long queues of service seekers.
Maltis challenges are not limited to recurrent glitches with the system as government and a consult-ant have for more than seven years been in a standoff over the handover of the system.
The initial handover was slated for 2017, but there have been sev-eral shifts which left the system under the control of the consultant.
Attorney General Thabo Chakaka Nyirenda was yet to respond to our questionnaire on the status of the government’s efforts to take over the system.
The 2024 Annual Economic Report revealed that service provision challenges saw the directorate failing to meet its 2023 revenue tar-get with only K9.4 billion generated out of a targeted K17.7 billion.
