572,674 smart driving licences risk expiry as NTSA fails to deliver
Left unused, the 572,674 unprinted cards now risk expiring before they ever reach motorists, rendering them useless and resulting in wasted public funds.
The National Transport and Safety Authority is under sharp scrutiny over its failure to print more than half of the smart driving licences acquired under a Sh2 billion deal, exposing taxpayers to potential losses amounting to Sh176 million.
According to the Auditor-General’s latest report, the authority had only printed 1,637,930 smart driving licences by the end of June 2024, just 33 percent of the total five million cards contracted despite the National Bank of Kenya (NBK) having delivered over four million cards.
“Review of the project status as at June 30, 2024 revealed that 1,637,930 or 33 percent of total contracted cards had been printed since inception, an indication of very low performance,” said Nancy Gathungu in the audit report for the financial year ending June 2024.
The smart licences are embedded with electronic chips similar to those in ATM cards and typically have a shelf life of five to 10 years.
Left unused, the 572,674 unprinted cards now risk expiring before they ever reach motorists, rendering them useless and resulting in wasted public funds.
The new generation licences, which cost drivers Sh3,050 and expire every three years, were introduced to replace the old paper-based documents. However, seven years after the programme began in 2017, NTSA has printed less than half of the targeted five million cards, despite the supplier having fulfilled nearly the entire order.
NTSA had signed the Sh2 billion contract with NBK to supply, install, and maintain the smart driving licence system, with a plan to complete printing within three years.
But delays by the authority have left a huge chunk of registered drivers, over 60 percent, still without the digital licences, raising questions about compliance, enforcement, and oversight.
Some of the already delivered cards were returned to the supplier, while others remain idle, worsening the situation and increasing the risk of expiry.
Audit reports are usually published with a delay, meaning the state of the project in the current 2024/25 financial year may not yet be captured.
