The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) will begin piloting a new digital vehicle registration system in August 2026 as part of efforts to eliminate number plate cloning and strengthen vehicle identification and tracking across the country.
The Chief Executive Officer of the DVLA, Julius Neequaye Kotey, said the pilot phase will precede the nationwide rollout of the system, which is scheduled to commence on January 1, 2027.
Speaking in an interview on JoyNews July 25, Mr. Kotey said the digital transformation initiative would introduce a more secure and centralised process for producing and managing vehicle number plates.
“We are looking at doing the piloting from August. The exact date in August I wouldn’t disclose. The piloting system will start then, the main registration begins January 1, 2027,” he said.
According to the DVLA CEO, the new system is designed to address longstanding weaknesses that have enabled the illegal production of duplicate number plates and complicated efforts by security agencies to trace vehicle ownership.
“Today Ghana Police Service, EOCO, National Security will call for information on a particular vehicle, and sometimes we struggle to get this information. Sometimes we don’t have it at all,” he stated.
Mr. Kotey attributed part of the problem to the ease with which individuals can obtain number plates from unauthorised producers, revealing that his own investigation exposed significant gaps in the current system.
“I did my own research. A woman at Pokuase Road, I went to them, I was just passing and I saw that the woman had displayed number plates. I went to her and said I want a number plate. I just wrote the number for her and she took the money from me. The next day I had a plate,” he disclosed.
He stressed that vehicle number plates are security documents and should only be produced under strict regulatory oversight.
“A number plate you emboss is a security document. It’s not for anyone to have or to be able to emboss,” he said.
Under the new digital system, the production of number plates will be centralised and linked directly to the DVLA’s database. Vehicle information will be electronically transmitted to authorised embossers, who will operate under the Authority’s supervision.
“The manufacturing system now takes information from DVLA, manufactures the plates and then sends it to an embosser for the embosser to also emboss. The embossers are also going to be regulated by DVLA,” Mr. Kotey explained.
He said the reforms are expected to significantly improve vehicle identification and tracking, provide law enforcement agencies with more reliable data, and reduce criminal activities associated with cloned vehicles and fraudulent number plates.
