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‘Only one million vehicles have insurance policy’

Out of the 2.3 million vehicles in the country, only one million have insurance cover, the former Chief Executive of Vanguard Assurance, Mahama E. Baba has said.

He said the practice of vehicle owners not insuring their vehicles put the life of the vehicles owners and pedestrians in danger and also made the state to lose a lot of revenue.

Mr Baba disclosed this at a day’s Training of Trainers (ToT) seminar for eighty personnel of the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) from the Greater Accra and Tema Regions on the enforcement of the Motor Insurance Database (MID), in Accra yesterday.

The training formed part of a nationwide educational training programme  by the National Insurance Commission (NIC) in collaboration with the MTTD, to build the capacity of MTTD personnel on the MID to eliminate fake insurance stickers and increase the purchase of motor insurance.

MID is an electronic insurance database which has been developed by the National Insurance Commission (NIC) to help MTTD personnel to detect fake insurance stickers.

Mr Baba who chaired the programme said owners of the uninsured vehicles could not access insurance on their vehicles to buy new vehicle and people who were knocked down or injured by such vehicles could not claim to access healthcare.

He entreated the insurance companies to take advantage of the low motor insurance penetration to develop motor insurance products for the public and urged  NIC to further review and fine-tune the MID to meet the changing dynamics of digitisation and technology.

The Director General of the MTTD, Commissioner of Police, Beatrice Zakpaa Vib-Sanziri in her address said under the programme, 400 ToT would be trained so that they would in turn train other personnel of the MTTD across the country on the MID.

She said a lot of unscrupulous people had been issuing fake insurance stickers and cautioned the vehicle owners to do due diligence before buying policy for their vehicles.

The Director General said the MID would help the MTTD personnel to prevent vehicles with fake insurance plying the road in order not to endanger the lives of pedestrians.

She commended NIC for initiating the training and the decision to supply the MTTD with hand-held devices to detect fake insurance stickers.

The Commissioner of the NIC, Justice Ofori, who spoke on the topic, ‘The enforcement of the Motor Insurance Database – the role of the Police’, said the MID was not only to increase insurance penetration in the country, but to help the Police in the effective enforcement of road traffic regulations.

Mr Ofori said the implementation of the MID was application of contemporary technology to revolutionalise the practice of insurance in order to block the leakages in the system and protect the citizenry.

By Kingsley Asare

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