Driving permits to cost less as government takes over process

Getting or renewing a driving permit in Uganda was not always this smooth. For years it involved crumpled notes surreptitiously pressed into the hands of a non-descript man who disappeared into an alley on Nasser Road and, with luck, returned hours later with a printed permit. Provenance? Don’t ask, don’t tell.

A decade and a half ago things got somewhat better when the driving permits were computerised under a concession to Face Technologies, a South African company. There were plenty of teething problems, including long queues at the end of which lay the chance to fight for attention at a small window.

Today, getting or renewing a driving permit is a painless process that takes about 30 minutes. Text reminders for renewals go out a month in advance, and again a few days to the expiry date. It is one of the few public services in Uganda that does what it says on the tin. In less than a year, Face Technologies will be gone – its concession ends in May 2020 and the process will be taken over by the Ministry of Works and Transport (MoWT).

The original contract was a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) – one of those where a private company uses its money to set up the infrastructure, operates it to recover its investment and a return, then transfers it to the government. With costs fully recovered and the return to investment slashed, the price of getting or renewing driving permits is expected to fall from next year without the process becoming any less efficient.

Technocrats from Ministry of Transport have been working hard behind the scenes, first to push Face Technologies to become more efficient, and then training ministry staff to ensure they are ready to run the system when the concession runs out.

There are also plans to bring other related services, including motor vehicle licensing, registration and inspection under one roof for even more efficiency.

But no good intention goes unpunished. With the transfer looming, plans are quietly being mulled in certain government circles to consider moving the issuance and renewal of driving permits to the Uganda Security Printing Company, a joint venture between the Uganda Printing and Publishing Company (UPPC) and Veridos, itself a joint venture between two German companies.

“Those pushing it are throwing around the President’s name in a manner designed to intimidate and force the issue,” a Justice ministry official familiar with the matter, but who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said. “It’s quite unhelpful, frankly.”

Veridos was in the news two years ago as it sought to win a contract to print the country’s bank notes.
That effort was unsuccessful after opposition from the Central Bank and discomfort at the highest levels of government after officials who travelled to Germany as part of a due diligence trip said they had been pigeon-holed in a five-star hotel and had not seen the company’s operation to raise their levels of comfort.
Attempts to keep the officials from revealing their experiences on the trip were unsuccessful at the time.

Electronic passports

Nevertheless, in October 2018, Veridos signed a contract with government to set up a joint venture company with UPPC that would print all government’s security documents, including ePassports, birth and death certificates, trading licences and all manner of official documents.

The first batch of ePassports are expected to be launched later this year despite ongoing court cases seeking to nullify a directive by the government forcing the early expiry of existing passports in order to drive uptake of the new format documents. The higher costs of the new passports will include the private company’s guaranteed profits.

The Permanent Secretary in the Internal Affairs ministry, Mr Benon Mutambi, downplayed the potential impact of the legal challenge in an interview with Sunday Monitor.

“Once the system is in place, processing of the passport will be done within 48 hours and all the inefficiencies will be eliminated because all the systems will be automated,” he said by telephone.

His Ministry of Works and Transport counterpart, Mr Waiswa Bageya, was upbeat about reports of Veridos’ interest, saying the Finance ministry had promoted the “arrangement”. It is the reported private sector interest in the driving permit and the possibility of a new concession that has drawn widespread concern from several government officials this newspaper spoke to.

“It is like taking a loan to build a house, then just as you are about to finish paying off the loan they tell you that you have to pay the loan again for another 15 years,” an official from the Ministry of Finance, who also spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, said, in reference to the length of Veridos’ concession with the government.

“Why should Ugandans pay more for driving permits so that a private company can make profit when we have a chance to reduce the cost while also closing the original deal of transferring the system back to government? We need to be focused,” the official added.

A senior Veridos executive declined to confirm whether or not the company has an interest in taking over the printing of driving permits. “We are unable to comment on existing or future projects due to non-disclosure agreements that are customary in this sector,” Mareike Ahrens, the company’s vice president for public relations and marketing communications, said in an email.
Mr Winstone Katushabe, the commissioner in charge of transport, regulation and safety at the Ministry of Works and Transport, declined to comment on reports of a planned new concession over the driving permits. His team, he said, was working on ensuring that the transfer is seamless.

“First the system needs to be maintained to make it more efficient. After the handover we will then compute the costs and put proposals to Ministry of Finance on how the system will remain efficient and cost-effective without making it a burden to taxpayers,” Mr Katushabe said.

The current plan is to move the driving permit processing to a ministry facility closer to the city centre. If past experience is a guide, a change to a new system will bring longer queues and higher prices.