NTSA orders driving schools to re-validate their licences within 14 days

The National Transport and Safety Authority has now ordered all driving schools to re-validate their licenses within 14 days.

The authority issued the order in a notice in the newspapers saying the move is aimed at accessing compliance with the traffic driving school rules.

“The exercise is further intended to weed out driving schools operating without meeting the set requirements,” said part of the notice.

Those operating the schools were advised to use NTSA website and fill a revalidation form which must be submitted to any authority office in the country within 14 days from April 30.

NTSA said all driving school branches are separate entities and must therefore complete the form in their individual capacities.

“Driving schools will be held responsible for any misinformation provided. Failure to submit the duly completed form within the stipulated timeframe will lead to action being taken without further reference to the driving schools,” said the notice.

The move to make the schools legal again was in the offing for months. Last week, interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i met the NTSA board before he announced the schools have up to July 1 to re-validate their licenses.

 “If by then they don’t have the new generation license which means they have been re-validated, they will consider themselves closed,” Matiang'i said.

“The process will be stringent and stiff. They will have to be physically inspected by NTSA inspectors together with the police before they can be allowed to continue holding their licenses to train our drivers.” 

There are about 600 driving schools in the country.

Matiang'i said NTSA will inspect the schools, check their level of compliance, and ensure that their environments are conducive to driver-instruction before they are validated.

“The irresponsibility with which we have handled this [driver training] is amazing even to ourselves. Some places are funny dingy corners where people would turn out with one ramshackle of a vehicle with a guy who only God knows where they were trained as drivers,” he said.

The CS also gave NTSA 14 days to issue new licences to all towing and recovery vehicles. Matiangi said many vehicles have been destroyed by the towing and recovery vehicles.

 “In 14 days, anyone operating a towing and recovery vehicles has to get a new inspection sticker. If we see those funny looking vehicles on roads and no one is asking, we will know that we have not done the work we are supposed to do.”

Matiang'i said transport stakeholders will meet with the Insurance Regulatory Authority for collaboration on vehicle registration and insurance.

He said the government will use the IRA to come up with stringent mechanisms of ensuring that those on the roads are legitimate and genuine vehicle owners.

Among the issues contained in an earlier notice are that each driving school should own not less than 1.7 acres of land upon which it must develop facilities and have infrastructure of a model highway, a well-equipped ICT teaching aids classroom with computers as well as projectors and a management structure.