Hon Minister Tour Department of Traffic and Transport with Media
The Minister of Public Works and Transport Honourable Maliehe Prince Maliehe visited the Department of Traffic and Transport on the 05th August, 2019 with the purpose of briefing the media about developments the Ministry has embarked on and future plans.
The public will remember the struggle the Department has faced as far as services are concerned, especially the issuance of driver’s licenses, car registration and number plates. The Honourable Minister took a tour together with the media to show some of the areas where the Department has achieved an improvement.
Hon Minister said the vehicle registration section has improved the service drastically because there are no longer queues and people get services timeously without having to spend the whole day at the Department. The Minister acknowledged that previously people had to wake up as early as around 3.00 am and sometimes they would even go back having got no services. Mr. Maliehe reiterated that the services are impressive and they are going to maintain the set standard or improve more.
He further noted that there are still challenges in the provision of services such as driver’s licenses and issuance of number plate services and the Department is working hard to address. One of the responsibilities of the Ministry is to help in the job creation and poverty alleviation, in order to fulfill that, Honourable Maliehe disclosed that the Department of Traffic and Transport is undergoing the process of outsourcing the issuance of number plates to private sector through open tender process. The number plates shall be done regionally, Maseru, Mohale’s Hoek and Leribe. He said that Basotho shall no longer be compelled to come to Maseru to attain number plates which shall be a great achievement for the Ministry as well as private sector empowerment.
The demonstration was held for the media on how the printing of driver’s licenses process goes and it was explained that it takes less than 2 minutes to complete the process. The first step is application stage, followed by data capturing, verification, then printing and issuance of the license.
Meanwhile, the Principal Secretary in the Department Mr. Thabo Motoko said that the department is in a process of developing the vehicle registration system that will have all modules needed to address all issues related to transport sector services rendered by the Department.
According to Mr. Motoko, one of the modules to be introduced in the new system will show the traffic offences committed by drivers; and in such an incident, driver’s license and the vehicle License disk cannot be renewed before settling those fines, as a result, this will improve revenue collection that will contribute immensely to the economy of this country.