The Minister of Transport is encouraging owners of all vehicles and motorcycles to register with the newly established digital logbook registration system.

On Thursday, the ministry announced the official launch of a digitized logbooks and plate numbers system for vehicles and motorcycles.

Minister Madut Biar disclosed that the new degital logbooks are not subjected to renewal like the current ones.

“The logbooks are printed once until the life of the car ends. So there is no renewal unless it is damaged. That’s also good news for vehicle users and motorcycle users to be happy for this information,” he said.

He however underscored that motorists will be required to have their vehicles and motorcycles inspected once in a year.

“There is going to be inspection of vehicles that will be done annually and this is where only the car owners would be required to respect the time so that when the ministry and particularly the directorate of transport and road safety request any vehicle owner. You should respect and come so that your vehicles and motorcycles are inspected and put back to the road. The objective is actually to make our road users to use standard vehicles so that we don’t fall into some accidents,” he explained.

Biar also specified that a subsidiary company of the ministry known as the Digital Registry Company will carry out the task in collaboration with the Directorate of Transport and Road Safety.

The company, he said will now operate officially with the government to print necessary documents for car registration and log books.

“The minister of transport has been actually been working tirelessly with the company to see into it that this day is an important day for the opening of this company to operate officially to print all the necessary documents for cars registration and logbooks,” Biar said.

Motorists are now required to register with the ministry by resubmitting their current logbooks in order to obtain a digitized ones.

“Anything that has been going on, now it is actually going to be digitized and we are going to have a central system of data, so I am encouraging the car users being a private, government or NGOs, to come to this facility so that they are register officially and data is kept,” he said.

The new system is now declared open and the company will start issuing the digitized non-renewable logbooks, the minister said.

“We are ready since you have seen them here. Anybody that will even start from tomorrow, if you bring your new car, they will start processing all these documents.”

So we are ready as of today, and if they are already here, they will just be put into the digital system, and then now you will be required to get a digitized logbook,” he added.

It is not clear if the digitized logbook system will stop harassment and extortion allegations on road users by some traffic officers.

In January this year, the Ministry of Interior in collaboration with Juba City Council and a private company launched a digitized traffic system including installation of signage to regulate traffic flow in the City.

The project was said to include installation of street CCTV cameras, digitized registration of car logbooks to monitor and track traffic motorists.