Government Set to Deregister All Driving Schools in Kenya

The government is set to deregister all driving schools in Kenya and withdrawing their operational licenses in a move that seeks to bring forth sanity, organization and doing away with rogue operators.

The National Transport and Safety Authority disclosed that plans are in place to ensure that all driving schools in operation register afresh to ensure that they follow required procedures and guideline in place.

A meeting which is set to be chaired by Interior Cabinet Secretary Dr.Fred Matiang’i might take place on Thursday to give the way forward on the issue and if a go-ahead for deregistration is agreed upon, an anti-agency task-force will be set to oversee the whole exercise.

The decision is also partly a result of a High Court ruling quashing an earlier proposed curriculum by NTSA that the schools ought to follow. The driving schools had moved to court last year to challenge a proposed curriculum for training and testing of drivers by NTSA.

Officials now plan to issue new directives to register all the schools afresh, so that only qualified institutions remain in business.

“We have to be firm on driving schools. Our proposal is to de-register all of them, and have them register afresh so that we know who is qualified to run a driving school,” said an official at NTSA.

New rules will be read out in the meeting and will set the tempo for the de-registration exercise.

For instance, to get a new driving license, one will have to fulfill certain conditions, including a medical check-up.

Each driving school will also be required to own not less than 1.7 acres upon which it must develop proper training facilities.

The school will be required to have a model highway, a well-equipped ICT center, and a certified management structure.

A source at the Office of the President said the Government had agreed on how to move forward on the issue, and that this would mark a new beginning.

Mr. Matiang’i has told NTSA to be firm in implementing its mandate.

“Our statistics on road accidents do not reflect the number of roadworthy vehicles currently registered in our systems,” said Dr. Matiang’i.

“These discrepancies imply that there could be many unroadworthy vehicles operating after passing our inspection tests irregularly.”

Plan to deregister driving school started off in 2017 when there were reports of increased road accidents across Kenyan roads attributed to recklessness and failure of drivers to follow traffic rules.

In 2018, more than 2500 lives were lost through road accidents in Kenya according to reports from NTSA. 

The World Health Organization’s global survey of road safety reported that 13,463 Kenyans died in 2017 in crashes on the country’s roads, a toll is more than four times higher than the government’s figure of 2,965 deaths.

The rate of road traffic deaths in Kenya far exceeds the global rate and is somewhat higher than the average for Africa, WHO notes.

Kenya’s road traffic fatality rate in 2017 stood at 27.8 persons per 100,000 population, according to WHO’s calculations.

The global rate was 18.2 deaths per 100,000 people, while the Africa average was 26.6 per 100,000.