URA should review vehicle verification
Nov 26, 2006
The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) is carrying out a national motor vehicle verification exercise to update its registry and weed out forged road licence stickers.
The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) is carrying out a national motor vehicle verification exercise to update its registry and weed out forged road licence stickers.
The objectives of the exercise are good but the implementation is ill-conceived.
Firstly, URA said the exercise is voluntary but there are penalties for non-compliance. They should be sincere and say the exercise is compulsory because penalties do not apply to voluntary exercises.
Secondly, the period given is so short that it makes the whole exercise a mockery. Less than two weeks were given for all vehicles to be taken to a few verification points manned by one or two people each. Out of over 100 vehicles taken to each point everyday, only a few are checked.
Motorists wait for hours, sometimes a whole day, without being attended to. This wastes time.
Thirdly, most motorists work in offices or businesses and do not have chauffeurs to take the vehicles for verification. They are too busy even to spare one hour to rush to town during office hours for shopping or other errands.
These may never make it to the verification centres in the given period. It’s unrealistic to expect people to abandon work to take vehicles for verification, which will not be done until one has gone there 10 times and waited from morning to evening.
With only three days to go, not even 10 percent of the vehicles have been checked. To avoid paralysing the country by impounding vehicles after the deadline, URA should call off the exercise and go back on the drawing board. The validation should be done over a long period, say a year or two, at all URA licensing centres. Motorists should be required to come with their vehicles for verification when renewing their road licences.
Because the vehicles will not be coming on the same day and at the same place, the exercise will be less tedious. After a year or two, URA will realise that they have checked every vehicle on the road without inconveniencing anybody.
This may require licensing centres to operate on Saturdays and Sundays for at least a year.
The objectives of the exercise are good but the implementation is ill-conceived.
Firstly, URA said the exercise is voluntary but there are penalties for non-compliance. They should be sincere and say the exercise is compulsory because penalties do not apply to voluntary exercises.
Secondly, the period given is so short that it makes the whole exercise a mockery. Less than two weeks were given for all vehicles to be taken to a few verification points manned by one or two people each. Out of over 100 vehicles taken to each point everyday, only a few are checked.
Motorists wait for hours, sometimes a whole day, without being attended to. This wastes time.
Thirdly, most motorists work in offices or businesses and do not have chauffeurs to take the vehicles for verification. They are too busy even to spare one hour to rush to town during office hours for shopping or other errands.
These may never make it to the verification centres in the given period. It’s unrealistic to expect people to abandon work to take vehicles for verification, which will not be done until one has gone there 10 times and waited from morning to evening.
With only three days to go, not even 10 percent of the vehicles have been checked. To avoid paralysing the country by impounding vehicles after the deadline, URA should call off the exercise and go back on the drawing board. The validation should be done over a long period, say a year or two, at all URA licensing centres. Motorists should be required to come with their vehicles for verification when renewing their road licences.
Because the vehicles will not be coming on the same day and at the same place, the exercise will be less tedious. After a year or two, URA will realise that they have checked every vehicle on the road without inconveniencing anybody.
This may require licensing centres to operate on Saturdays and Sundays for at least a year.