Benefits of the new system
Following the roll out of the upgraded Malawi Traffic Information System (MalTIS), the Directorate has been awash with numerous enquiries and feedback from stakeholders from all walks of life.
Many of the questions we have received have been on issues ranging from questioning the need for entity registration, why the Directorate decided to upgrade the system, why the interface with Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) and the Malawi Police Service (MPS), arguing that these things are delaying the processes which, before the installation of the upgrade, were taking a short amount of time to finish a particular transaction.
Motorist information corner therefore, this week, has decided to depart from the usual information we have been dishing out, especially on transactions and procedures to giving you, our readers, a brief background to the upgrade of the system and to the purposes of the different business processes the upgraded system is requiring you to undergo.
The government decided to embark on the process of upgrading the system after noting that the old system had, in the recent past, been experiencing challenges due to the increase in demand for services as a result of the ever increasing number of vehicles and drivers in the country. The objective of the upgrade is therefore to improve on the efficiency and transparency in our provision of services to the general.
One of the benefits of the system upgrade that we can easily demonstrate is the ability to print driving licences on the same day soon after going through the necessary procedures for renewal or road test if it is a learner driver. Whilst in the old system one had to wait weeks, or months on end to collect their driving licence, now licence collection is instant and has been decentralised. Every one of our offices is now printing its own driving licences for its applicants.
Entity registration is another process that has raised a lot of queries from you our clients. For the sake of those who don’t know by now what the Entity Registration process is, the process refers to the enrolment of individuals and companies into the system after which individuals are given entity registration cards whilst companies are given entity registration certificates
The entity registration process is a new business process which the system requires every individual/organisation to e enrolled into the system first in order to be able to process the any transaction in the system. The purpose of entity registration is for the Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services () to link all the records of every individual/ company to a specified identity number generated by the system, in order to be able to verify and authenticate every entity when processing the entity’s respective transaction. This process will enhance security of your property in that no one else can make any transaction in respect of your fleet if not authorised by you (proxy). Before this system, the Directorate used to receive case s whereby individuals were robbed of their property through fraudulent means where thieves would easily change ownership of a vehicle without the owners’ knowledge. This was possible because people were creating multiple Identity numbers in the old system.
Another benefit of the new system is that it will promote transparency and accountability as well as proper reconciliation of transactions in the system and money deposited at the bank by our clients seeking various road traffic documents. Whilst in the old system we still collected payment through the bank, the bank was not particularly linked to the system as such some individuals were taking advantage of this by acquiring our services without payment. The new system has made this pilferage practically impossible in that all documents produced by the system will have been duly paid through bank deposits. The system is set up in a way that it cannot produce any road traffic document if the document has not been paid for. The bank and the system are now linked.
Linking with the Malawi Revenue Authority and the Malawi Police Service is another plus to the Government of Malawi. MRA, Police and DRTSS became increasingly aware of some cases of tax evasion by some unpatriotic Malawians who would bring importer vehicles into the country and the evade customs duty. These individuals would then proceed to bring fraudulent documentation to DRTSS for vehicle registration. It therefore became apparent that the only way to curb this malpractice was to introduce a system which will interface with all three institutions to ensure that there is compliance in terms of Customs Clearance and Police clearance. In short, listen below are the practical benefits of the system;
- a) Enable automation of existing links with external systems necessary for Maltis Operations like Banks, Malawi Revenue Authority, Insurance Companies and Malawi Police (Interpol).
- b) Improve road safety through making sure that every driver on the roads of Malawi is indeed competent and qualified to drive the category of vehicle he or she is driving and also making sure that eye test and aptitude tests are duly administered to improve and enhance road safety knowledge.
