THE Vehicle Inspectorate Department (VID) has started redesigning its depots to ensure that 80% of the tests leading to the issuance of a driver’s licence are done within the premises to guard against corruption, a senior government official told a parliamentary committee yesterday.
BY TARISAI MANDIZHA BUSINESS REPORTER
Transport and Infrastructural Development secretary Munesu Munodawafa told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructural Development that government was mulling introducing a system whereby learners’ licence tests are computerised.
He said the system was now awaiting parliamentary approval and was expected to be rolled out in the first half of this year.
“We are doing a project under the build, operate and transfer (BOT) arrangement which is called Zimbabwe Integrated Transport Management System. Basically, this project will introduce e-driver provisional test.
“In other words you go to VID depots, instead of getting a sheet of paper and an examiner sitting in front of you, you get the questions come out through a computer writing system and you punch a button so the full test will now be marked by the computer,” Munodawafa said.
On the redesigning of all VID depots, Munodawafa said the programme was being carried out at all VID depots countrywide.
“We have now started redesigning the examination depots. We now want the hill-start to be done inside the depots,” Munodawafa said.
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“In Harare, for example, if you are being examined at Eastlea depot, you will need to go to Kopje and it’s now between you and the examiner whether you managed to do the hill-start or not, but we are constructing hill-start facilities in Harare, Bulawayo, Gwanda, Victoria Falls and in Chitungwiza.
“We now want to create a standard hill-start so that everyone who passes is examined by use of the same standard,” Munodawafa said.
He said the new development entails that 80% of the content or examination to get a driver’s licence which includes parallel parking and other parking angle tests would now be done inside the depots to enable everyone to observe the process.
He said only 20% of the tests which include actual road usage would be carried out outside the depots.
Munodawafa also urged motorists to avoid paying bribes to obtain vehicle fitness tests.
He said the new system would also link with the vehicle registration of a car where currently all the cars are now registered in the vehicle registration system of the Central Vehicle Registry data base.
“This means if your vehicle is impounded, as it enters the VID gate, it will be entered automatically into the system and that system will read the entire history of your vehicle, whether you have registered or paid your radio licence,” he said.
Munodawafa said when the vehicles go out of the VID depots, the system should be able to report on its new status.
“Beyond that, we are also linking the system to ZINARA and the toll gates.
“So if it happens your vehicle is not licenced the toll gate boom will not open. I encourage all Zimbabweans to just make sure that all their vehicles are fully paid for,” he added.
