The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) will begin piloting its new digital vehicle registration system in August 2026, as part of efforts to eliminate the cloning of number plates and strengthen vehicle identification processes.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the DVLA, Julius Neequaye Kotey, said the pilot phase will pave the way for the full rollout of the system on January 1, 2027.

Speaking in an exclusive interview on JoyNews’ The Pulse on Friday, July 24, Mr. Kotey explained that the digital transformation project will introduce a more secure system 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 will help address longstanding challenges, including the ease with which individuals can illegally produce duplicate number plates and the difficulty security agencies face in tracing vehicle information.

He said institutions such as the Ghana Police Service, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), and National Security often request vehicle information, but the current system sometimes makes it difficult to provide accurate records.

“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 some of these challenges to the unrestricted access to number plate production, revealing that several companies and individuals currently have the ability to emboss number plates without proper verification.

He said his own checks revealed how easily people could acquire number plates without submitting any documentation.

“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.

The DVLA CEO stressed that vehicle number plates are security documents and should not be produced by unauthorised persons.

“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 system, Mr. Kotey explained that number plates will no longer be manually produced by multiple operators. Instead, production will be controlled through a centralised manufacturing system linked directly to the DVLA.

He said the system will take vehicle information from the DVLA database, generate the required details, and send them to authorised embossers who will be regulated by the Authority.

“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,” he explained.

Mr. Kotey said the reform is expected to improve vehicle tracking, support law enforcement agencies with reliable information, and reduce criminal activities associated with cloned vehicles and fraudulent number plates.