…game changer, adopting smart innovations to enforce traffic rules and regulations.
THE Government of Zambia under the leadership of His Excellency President Hakainde Hichilema have committed to take advantage of Zambia’s geographical location to transform the country into a regional transport and logistics hub and improve the road safety profile.
The overriding objective of the UPND government in the transport sector is to strengthen domestic and regional connectivity, with the view to connecting producers with markets, supporting participation in regional and global value chains, lowering the cost of doing business, enhancing competitiveness, and improving public service delivery.
Transport and other logistics procedures, enforcement of rules and regulations are critical in lowering the cost of doing business and ensuring the smooth flow of the supply chain to spar economic growth.
To accelerate government’s agenda of ensuring an effective transport policy for supporting efficient and equitable licensing and registration procedures, the Road Transport and safety Agency (RTSA) – the lead road safety and transport regulator in Zambia seeks to realign its operations to address the mismatch in regulating the road transport sector in regard to enforcement of traffic rules, regulations and other statutory obligations.
As part of the transformation agenda, the RTSA has developed an Information Communication Technology (ICT) – based smart enforcement app for implementation of rules and regulations related to road-based violations by motorist and Public Service Vehicles (PSVs) such as trucks and buses, a move aimed at reducing transportation and logistics cost of the industry as well as ensuring smooth flow of traffic on the Zambian roads with minimal presence of traffic law enforcement officers on the road.
This would significantly reduce the need to deploy officers on the ground since the app would be able to alert officers whenever a vehicle is in violation.
The smart enforcement app, supported by the smart mobile phone is currently been implemented on a pilot basis under the RTSA and will be launched on the Saturday 27th November 2021. The mobile phone based smart enforcement app supports the automated enforcement of vehicle and driver related violations such as validity of Road Tax, Certificate of Fitness, Driving Licence, including the Road Service Licence (RSL) for Commercial Vehicles.
The enforcement mechanism also allows the officer to issue all fines, penalties, or any other punitive measure through the app, thus ensuring transparency.
By using the integrated Smart Enforcement App, data related to the all Zambia registered vehicles on the road would be drawn from the existing RTSA databases and this data would be available to enforcement officers on the road for scanning using mobile phones installed with the Smart Enforcement App.
The RTSA is leveraging on various ITC-based solutions to innovate technology driven enforcement mechanism as means of creating a favorable environment for transport and logistic as well as improving the road safety profile of the country.
One of the major challenges that the smart enforcement application is addressing is delays due to random stoppages for physical checking of vehicles and verification of documents.
The app would help in decreasing the number of physical checks of vehicles by enforcement officers, a strategy to reduce logistics costs on road transportation.
RTSA is working on widening the implementing the Smart Enforcement Application on a large scale bases covering all the parts of the country after the ITC-based solution officially launched.
The Smart Enforcement App will have wide ranging economic benefits for the country and help in reduction of logistics costs. An effective enforcement will be critical in preventing not just revenue loss but also accidents and loss of human lives making Zambian roads safer for trade and commuters.
Moving forward, the RTSA will continue working with transport, logistics and road safety stakeholders to make the application more effective and efficient in responding to the government’s drive of adopting smart innovations to accelerate the vision 2030, to become “A Prosperous Middle-Income Nation by the Year 2030”.
The author is Head ñ Public Relations
Road Transport and Safety Agency
fmubanga@rtsa.org.zm
Website: www.rtsa.org.zm
