Liberian delegation understudies Ghana’s road safety management strategies
A Six-Member delegation from the Liberian Road Safety Secretariat is in Ghana to understudy the country’s road safety management strategies.
Led by the Deputy Minister for Land and Rail Transport, Darious Kollie, the delegation yesterday called on management of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) to learn from its experiences in a bid to improve their road infrastructure and safety on roads.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the DVLA, Mr Kwasi Agyeman Busia, welcoming the delegation, thanked them for recognising the works of the authority in contributing to road traffic safety in Ghana.
Established by an Act of Parliament, Act 569, he explained that the DVLA had been guided by its primary responsibility to ensure best practices for licensing drivers and vehicles to promote road safety.
In view of this, Mr Busia said his administration had pursued a transformation agenda focused on “people, process and technology” to uphold good driving standards in the country and ensure the use of road worthy vehicles on Ghana’s roads.
“In 2017 when we took over, DVLA was labelled the most corrupt institution and as a management, we have worked to change that ill perception riding on the back of research and technology.
We first set out to fix the people including our staff to make sure they have the right attitudes and working tools, building their capacity and welfare to work and deliver on the mandate then we gave priority to our clients to understand how we can meet their needs by improving our service delivery,” he said.
Mr Busia said digitising the operations of the DVLA has been high on the agenda of management resulting in innovations like the new smart driver’s licence, review of testing, licence acquisition and renewal process, among others.
“We are looking at sustaining some of the achievements through enforcement, entrenchment, data analysis and other interventions to ensure DVLA’s efficiency while pursuing integrity, excellence, professionalism and reliability in service delivery,” he noted.
The Deputy Minister for Land and Rail Transport, Mr Kollie, said Ghana and Liberia has had strong bilateral relationship which his country intended sustaining for a long time.
He commended the DVLA for being a technologically driven institution which was evident in transformation of most of its service centres across the country.
“We hope to share and gain knowledge on your operations which we believe we can practice in our country because currently our five-year plan on road safety have some commonalities with Ghana’s plan and we hope our visit will give us better outcomes,” he stated.
BY ABIGAIL ANNOH
