Minister assures speedy fixing of Malawi Road Traffic Management System

Minister of Transport and Public Works, Ralph Jooma says Malawians must
be patient before the Malawi Road Traffic Management System  (Maltis) which is currently down is fixed for them to get relevant documents.

The current Maltis was installed by the consultant, Gerrit Fischer who owns Fischer Consulting, a couple of years ago and has not given the Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services serious problems until now.

Speaking to reporters in Lilongwe, Jooma said government is doing all it can to make sure that the Maltis is up and running.

“We implore to Malawians that they should continue exercise patience because experts are on the ground to make sure that the Maltis is functioning once again.

“This predicament came about because of a power outage which affected servers at Capital Hill. Those who do not have relevant documents to go on the road must wait until we fix the problem because they will be flouting procedures if they drive vehicles without proper documents,” said Jooma.

Jooma said government will continue to engage the consultant so that the technology service provider hand over responsibility of running the system to government.

“We are not overly happy that the provider is still clinging to be incharge in the running of the Maltis. What we want as government is that this should be handled to us as soon as possible so that in case of eventualities we are not caught off guard as is the case now,” said Jooma.

Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services  (DRTSS) Fergus  Gondwe said it  is not easy to fix a problem like this one because it has never happened before.

“However the good thing is that we had some equipment meant for another centre in Zomba and we will use it to fix this problem” said Gondwe.

During a visit at the main server centre at Ministry of Transport at Capital Hill local experts were seen frantically trying to fix the server.

Some motorists at the DRTSS headquarters in separate interviews called on government to fix the problem as soon as possible because they are being hounded by traffic Police officers on the roads for not having proper documents.

The mishap is likely going to cost government millions of Kwacha since the DRTSS is one of the prominent cash cows.

Apparently,  DRTSS owed Fisher consulting K600 million, out of the total cost of the contract of about K1.6 billion (R38 million).