Kampala City Traders Association (Kacita) and the Ministry of Works and Transport (MoWT) are locked in a bitter exchange over delays being experienced by car importers during motor vehicle registration.
In a September letter to the Commissioner of Road Safety and Transport in the Ministry, Mr Winston Katushabe, the city traders’ body expressed concern and called for urgent enhancement measures to improve the dashboard monitoring tool for motor vehicle registration.
In the letter signed by Abel Mwesigye, the Kacita chief executive, the traders expressed ‘disappointment that the tool’s deployment occurred much later than originally promised, prolonging the very operational challenges it was designed to resolve.’
What is the background to this pain point?
Due to significant delays in the vehicle registration process, traders were frustrated at the losses whose brunt they continue to bear. They approached the MoWT-which oversees motor vehicle registration-for solutions. After several monthly discussions, the ministry deployed a dashboard monitoring tool to help provide visibility on the registration process.
The measure was welcomed by Kacita, but it didn’t take long for it to morph into a pain point, thanks to its perceived limited functionality.
Besides complaints about the tool’s limited functionality, traders also said it provides no visibility on Motor Vehicle Registration (MVR) application processes across the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) and other attendant MVR stages at the ministry.
Users cannot, for one, view progress at each stage. They cannot also identify responsible officers, hence reducing the possibility of officer accountability.
So what are the aggrieved parties calling for?
They are essentially pushing for three things.
Firstly, a non-negotiable, immediate, practical dry-run of the process to identify and rectify errors, define clear handover points and establish genuine accountability between URA, UNBS and the Ministry’s MVR department before the system is declared operational.
Secondly, a full stakeholder integration, with mandatory inclusion of URA and UNBS along with full visibility on each partner’s responsibilities and real-time progress. Lastly, they insist on incorporation of feedback from system users. The traders said they have ‘patiently supported this initiative’ and need to see tangible and urgent resolution of the bottlenecks.
What’s the MoWT’s position?
Well, on their part, the ministry, through the Commissioner of Road Safety and Transport in the Ministry, Mr Winston Katushabe, told traders that the issues they were raising in their letter had been raised in a stakeholder meeting at the start of September. He added that resolution of the same was work in progress.
Mr Katushabe wondered as to the motive behind Kacita’s letter, which, according to him, appeared to discredit the efforts made by the ministry and relevant stakeholders in developing the dashboard.
He said the traders’ letter might be ‘a hidden motive potentially driven by interests that are not entirely aligned with the collaborative spirit the ministry has fostered among stakeholders.’
Mr Katushabe said the dashboard was ‘a collective effort aimed at streamlining the motor vehicle registration process’ and called for constructive dialogue and collaboration to address the challenges raised by the traders.