Authority to oversee licencing, registration of drivers

By JOSHUA MANI
THE Road Traffic Authority (RTA) will be responsible for the licensing and registration of drivers and vehicles when a central data management system is in place, an official says.
Licensing and registration manager Wilson Wariaka told The National that information technology companies had submitted their proposals on the data management system to the Central Supply and Tenders Board.
“Once one is approved, then work will commence,” Wariaka said.
“The RTA was created to oversee and control land transport services and industry and it will properly coordinate the activities after it gets everything in place.”
Wariaka said driving licences created by different bodies at the moment had different designs and different kinds of machine to produce them.
“If you take a card produced by one machine and try to use it to create a similar one in another type of machine, it will not work,” Wariaka said.
He said the authority was established by the Road Traffic Act 2014 after the National Transport Strategy and Medium Term Transport plan found that transport in Papua New Guinea had suffered from inefficient and fragmented regulations and management.
“The Road Traffic Authority was created to control the land transport services and industry because individual authorities were not effective in providing data and coordinate with the department of transport. Road Traffic Authority was established to fit this loophole,” Wariaka said.