• The 51 driving school licenses were revoked for their failure to submit requisite documentation for the re-validation exercise.
• The exercise is conducted in order to weed out driving schools operating without meeting the set requirements.
The National Transport and Safety Authority has revoked 51 driving school licenses following failure to submit the required documentation for vetting
The Authority's Director General Francis Meja on Thursday said they are mandated to establish systems and procedures for, and oversee the training, testing and licensing of drivers, formulate and review the curriculum of driving schools.
Meja said implementing its mandate, the Authority has undertaken a Driving School Licenses Revalidation exercise in order to assess compliance with the Traffic Driving School Rules.
"The exercise is intended to weed out driving schools operating without meeting these requirements," he said.
According to Meja, the documents submitted by driving schools are being assessed to establish their compliance levels.
NTSA's axe has fallen on eight schools in Nairobi, three from Embu county, four from Kisumu, Mombasa and Machakos counties and five from Nakuru county.
Some 19 schools from Kiambu and Garissa counties have been affected, one from Kisii, Bungoma, Uasin Gichu, Meru & Marsabit counties respectively.
Last month, Interior CS Fred Matiang'i gave all the driving schools two months to seek fresh registration with NTSA or close down.
He said 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 would consider themselves closed.
“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,” he said.
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.