NTSA flagged over possible loss of Sh1b in smart driving license plan

NTSA officer removes a number blade from a Tuk tuk at Iguhu police station in Ikolomani during motor vehicle crackdown on April 11, 2024. [Benjamin Sakwa, Standard]

The Kenyan taxpayer may lose Sh1.19 billion because the Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has failed to enforce the use of smart card driving licenses, Auditor General Nancy Gathungu has said.

In her latest audit report for the year that ended June 30, 2023, Gathungu says the impending loss can be remedied if the roads agency can enforce the smart licence project.

Gathungu accused NTSA of making any effort to enforce the use of the new DLs and this could lead to the wastage of public resources already spent on the project.

The report indicates that NTSA entered into a contract with the National Bank of Kenya consortium on March 8, 2017, for the supply, delivery, installation and maintenance of 5 million second-generation smart card-based driving licenses at a contract sum of Sh2,028,991,964.

“Review of the project status as of June 30, 2023, revealed that the supplier had delivered 4,042,050 smart cards and paid a total of Sh1,195,201,497, out of which, only 1,479,176 cards had been printed for the past six years, leaving unutilized 2,562,874 cards valued at Sh788,852,617.20 that are in the authority’s store,” reads the report.

The project, Gathangu adds, was initially to run for three years, up to March 2020, meaning it is four years behind schedule.

“The uptake of smart driving licences is quite slow. Management did not demonstrate any effort to enforce the use of smart card driving licences, which may result in waste of public funds already incurred in the project. In the circumstances, value for money expended on this project of Sh1,195,201,497 could not be achieved,” noted the report.

NTSA established smart driving licences in 2017 to do away with the physical redbook driver’s licences. The new licenses were to have chips containing information such as personal identification numbers, contacts, past traffic offences, fines previously paid and warnings.

Police officers would be equipped with devices to enable them to read the information and add charge sheets to databases timeously. However, during a field verification, it was noted that NTSA had 20 biometric enrollment kits out of which, four were faulty. Most Huduma Centres lacked biometric kits and were only serving as collection centres.

“The available kits were also reported to be breaking down due to intermittent overloads. As a result, long queues were observed for those seeking the services,” Gathungu said in the report now before Parliament.

NTSA is also in the spot for inefficiencies in service delivery after it emerged large stocks of new generation number plates, car logbooks and smart driving licenses remained uncollected in its regional offices. A field verification showed stocks of 20,006 plates, 17,474 logbooks and 5,753 smart drivers’ licenses from 10 regional offices lay uncollected.

“Further, records indicated that among the stocks were expired driver’s licenses while some logbooks had been in the authority’s custody for over five years,” said the audit.

It added: “Further, interrogation revealed the system balances of uncollected items were differing from balances in the physical records. The management explained that the system could only allow the online authorised person to collect the items, while at the regions, there was a leeway for unauthorized owner to collect the items hence the difference.”

Gathungu attributed the non-collection of the large stocks to the unavailability and inaccessibility of NTSA’s services.

She said despite NTSA's services being applied online, the applicants have to physically visit the regional offices for finalization of the transactions as a collection of logbooks, number plates, smart driving licences, and inspection services are carried out at regional offices.

“…it was noted that the authority had 17 regional offices country-wide and fifty-two (52) Huduma Centre services that serve as dispatch centres which were sparsely distributed, far away from the customers/public. The distance covered by the public seeking service was so long a situation that could have contributed to slow collection rates of number plates and smart driving licenses and eventual low revenue realization,” she said.