Motor vehicle registration goes online

The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) will this week step up efforts to modernise motor vehicle registration through an online system.

The move, which will phase out manual registration of vehicles, will initially be available to car dealers and over the next few months be opened up to the public.

The new system is expected to cut down on the amount of time taken to register vehicles as well as the transfer of ownership to a matter of minutes. Acquiring logbooks currently takes up to a month but NTSA said this will be reduced to just ten minutes.

Consequently, NTSA is requesting vehicle owners to verify that their vehicles are in their names on the e-citizen portal, and if not complete the process of transfer by visiting NTSA offices with original documents.

Fernando Wangila, Director of ICT NTSA, said the migration of motor vehicle registration from the manual system, which is tedious and prone to manipulation, will be undertaken in a phased approach, with motor vehicle dealers expected to start using the NTSA portal exclusively beginning Monday June 13, 2016.

The system is already in use among motorcycle dealers, who have reported ease in doing business using the new system.

“The system has been ready for sometime and we have been undertaking internal tests to ensure that there will be minimal hiccups, if at all, once the proper implementation commences,” said Wangila.