•Driving schools have two months to seek fresh registration
•NTSA and police will physically inspect the schools to ensure compliance.
Image: FILE
Interior CS Fred Matiang'i has given all the driving schools two months to seek fresh registration with NTSA or close down.
Driving schools must ensure they have re-validated their licences by July 1 “and if by then they don’t have the new generation licence 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 licences to train our drivers.”
The National Transport and Safety Authority will re-register the close to 600 driving schools in the country between May 2 and July 1.
Thereafter, police will start a crackdown of those operating illegally.
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.
“So they [trainees] take one or two trips then they end up compromising the system, getting a licence and end up on our roads. This now must come to an end.”
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.
“And I will not shy to say this; it appears like there is a collusion between those characters and some of our police officers. This madness has to come to an end,” he said.
“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.