Car owners in Kenya will have up to 18 months to replace their car number plates with the digitals ones that were launched on Tuesday August 30 by Interior CS Fred Matiang’i, who was accompanied by his ICT counterpart Joe Mucheru and Transport CS James Macharia.
The digital number plates were launched at GSU Recce unit Headquarters in Ruiru, Nairobi where their production is taking place and will cost each motorist Kshs3000.
According to Matiang’i, the digital number plates were launched in a bid to curb forgery, duplication and swapping. He called upon Kenyans to embrace the change once the National Transport and Safety Authority calls upon them to do so.
The digital plates contain features that will ease tracking by government agencies and all vehicles, from motorcycles to tractors will be required to have them.
“Each one of the number plates is going to have a serial number. There will be correspondence between the serial number and the chassis number, so if the police arrest someone driving a Range Rover and the number plate is registered under a tractor, all that is what we will address with these plates,” the CS said.
He added that the move was part of the reforms that was initiated by President Uhuru Kenyatta following the 2019 Dusit attack.
The digital plates will also be fixed on imported vehicles at entry points to curb tax evasion among car dealers.
“We want to address the security of our country, we want to help other agencies such as the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) function properly. We are also helping the financial sector and improving on transparency,” Matiang’i noted.
Reacting to the development, a number of Kenyans have expressed their anger with some saying it was another means of the government to extort money from them.
“We have 4.8Million cars in Kenya. Do the math. GoK being greedy as usual,” a twitter user said.
“Ile upuzi iko hii Kenya. What makes a number plate different? As long as it’s just 4 letters and 3 numbers,” said another.
“Looks like huduma namba scam. The government needed to change the whole numbering system. A number plate should be random. It should never indicate the age of the vehicle,” another tweet read.
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