The Chief Executive of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), Mr. Julius Neequaye Kotey, earlier today attended a meeting with the Excavator Tracking team at Minerals Commission office in Accra. The meeting was to discuss and have first-hand information on the measures put in place by the Commission as well as provide the role of DVLA in the mining subsector in order to control the devastations being witnessed in parts of the country.

 This meeting comes in the wake of a taskforce put together by the sector minister, the Hon. Joseph Bukari Nikpe to identify and implement modalities for the registration, tracking and monitoring of excavators across the country. The meeting identified that the excavators that are within the jurisdiction of Ghana included concession-owned excavators, dealer-owned excavators, and individual-owned excavators. Among these categories of ownership of excavators, a large number of them have not been registered by the DVLA.

 While the Minerals Commission has means of identifying excavators that have been brought in by concession holders, the DVLA’s mandate has been side-stepped in most cases. The Authority is the only institution mandated to register every vehicle including mining equipment in the country.

 This makes it inherent for the Authority to intensify steps to ensure that all excavators within the jurisdiction are registered with DVLA which makes it easy for tracking and monitoring. The Authority assured that it stands ready to partner with the Minerals Commission, relying on its tracking systems, to have all excavators under their registry registered and issued with registration numbers. The Authority would deploy service teams across the mining areas to register all excavators that are operational.

 In addition, as a measure to ensure that the phenomenon of excavators moving from the port or dealers straight to mining sites is curtailed, the Authority in collaboration of the Minerals Commission and other stakeholders, would henceforth register every excavator that is imported into the country at the port of entry to enable the Commission to undertake tracking of the activities of these excavators.

 The Authority is committed to working together with other agencies towards the protection of our environment in efforts aimed at building a country that is sustainable and safe for current and future generations.

 The team was conducted by Sylvester Akpah (PhD), Computer Science Engineer, University of Mines & Technology (UMaT). The Chief Executive of DVLA was accompanied by Management members.