The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has announced
plans to introduce electronic logbooks to curb vehicle ownership
related fraud.
Director-general Francis Meja said the
move was part of the bid to improve information sharing through its
online register, the Transport Integrated Management System (TIMS),
hosted on its website.
“We are currently reviewing the
option of having electronic logbooks that can be easily verified through
the system and also seeing how the system can be integrated with
insurance firms to know who actually has insured their vehicle,” he said
in a statement.
Mr Meja said the system now allows commercial banks to view their financed assets electronically, reducing incidents of fraud.
“TIMS
has incorporated a component that now helps banks conduct quick online
searches thus eliminating fraudsters from the lending market,” said Mr
Meja.
He did not give the timelines of the planned launch of the electronic logbooks.
In
September last year, insurance fraud investigators busted a cartel of
con artists who were using fake car logbooks to swindle insurers out of
millions of shillings.
The cartel, suspected to consist
of about 10 scammers, had managed to infiltrate the NTSA’s online
database, compromising the integrity of vehicle registration details.
“We inherited a weak system from KRA (Kenya Revenue Authority)
but that is changing after we migrated services online with a robust
system,” said Mr Meja last September.
The NTSA, which
took over the role of registering vehicles from KRA in 2012, has
migrated the logbooks database to TIMS that is now the exclusive channel
through which car owners originate and execute transfers.
Fraudsters
on the prowl target banks with forge car documents to borrow loans. The
forgery also exposes unsuspecting genuine car owners, whose details
have been duplicated by the cartel, to run-ins with the police.
Mr
Meja had earlier said one of the safeguards put in the online vehicle
registration database is that once ownership of a vehicle changes hands
the owner immediately receives an alert on their phones.
No comments :
Post a Comment