Motorists yesterday woke up to the good news of the restoration of the Malawi Traffic Information System (Maltis) which collapsed on January 6 and disrupted service delivery nationwide.
Following the collapse of the Maltis system, the Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services was unable to issue certificates of fitness (CoF) and driving licences or register new vehicles or change ownership.
But during a visit to the Road Traffic regional office in Blantyre yesterday, service seekers were seen on long queues with officers assisting them to process documents. The situation was the same at private motor vehicle inspection garages which provide CoF services.
In an interview, minibus driver Samson Banda, who operates on the Limbe-Blantyre route, expressed delight with the resumption of operations which stopped on January 6 2025.
“I have started the process of renewing my category and when I am done, I will now be working without worries,” he said.
Ministry of Transport and Public Works spokesperson Watson Maingo said the system was restored yesterday and tests were conducted the same day to assess if there will be no further interruption in the system.
“The tests were successful and we have started providing services in all DRTSS offices across the country and in private garages which conduct vehicle inspections,” he said.
For about three weeks, the system was failing to give results when fed with information and this led to suspension of production of driving licences and CoF as well as provision of other services.
According to Maingo, technicians from the Road Traffic conducted the restoration in consultation with the system supplier Fischer Consulting.
In interviews on Tuesday before the system was restored, private vehicle inspection station (VIS) operators said they were hit hard by the malfunction of the system as they stopped operations.
VIS Association chairperson Owen Malijani, who operates Centre Tech in Lilongwe, said the loss in revenue means the firms will have challenges to pay their employees and cover other financial obligations.
“We will be forced to look for money from other sources as we have lost revenue after stopping operations,” he said.
The VIS Association has a membership of nine operators, according to Malijani.
A manager at one of the private operators in Blantyre said their garage normally receives an average of 50 vehicles per day for CoF.
A CoF is charged at K21 000 for a small vehicle which means that the garage was losing about K1 million per day in revenue.
Maltis challenges are not limited to recurrent glitches with the system as the government and Fischer Consulting have for more than seven years been in a stand-off over the handover of the system.
