Vehicle owners in Kenya are about to become a happy lot, following the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) rolling out of the Transport Integrated Management System (TIMS).
TIMS is an online platform where people can go to and register their cars and avoid the hustle of forming up queues at the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) offices in Times Tower, Nairobi. Not to mention the corrupt brokers who promise to fasten the registration process at a fee. These same brokers include part of KRA staff who are meant to serve, but deliberately move things slowly so that the applicants gives a bribe for things to move faster.
However, with TIMS, people can now go online and at the click of a button have their vehicle registered. No more queues and even more importantly no more bribing of brokers at KRA to have your documents processed at the pace it is supposed to be processed.
This is not the first time, however, that the NTSA is rolling out TIMS. It has been operation on a trial basis, but now the NTSA is fast-tracking the rollout to the public; ushering in a new era in motor vehicle registration in Kenya.
Wilson Lilumbi, a motor vehicle dealer in Nairobi, says some of the benefits he can see in TIMS include; time saving, transparency in the registration process and keeping brokers at bay.
“It is a secure system, but we are facing a number of challenges that NTSA needs to work on. For instance, the authority needs to upgrade TIMS as it is slow when congested,” complained Lilumbi.
NTSA aims at getting rid of the manual registration system and in its place have the modern and digital vehicle registration. The manual system took days just to renew one’s driving license with long queues being witnesses at the KRA offices. The process was also deliberately slowed down by KRA staffers who doubled up as brokers who wanted to fleece money from the impatient drivers.
The NTSA Director of ICT, Fernando Wangila said they are work to digitize the motor vehicle registration system. The changes according to Wangila will take place by the end of this month.
“We are working to enable buyers get their logbooks in less than 10 minutes,” said Wangila. “The manual process has been tedious and prone to manipulation. So tedious was it that some people opted not to change the names on the car’s logbook till such a time that they felt was absolutely necessary. The new system is expected to reduce transfer of ownership from a month to about 10 minutes.”
