More Than 70 Traffic Officials Involved in Corruption

24 April 2011

Maputo — 76 officials of the Mozambican government’s National Traffic Institute (INAV) have been accused of corruption in the issuing of new, biometric driving licences.

A statement from the Transport Ministry said that the 76 were detected during an internal audit under way in INAV, as part of the campaign against corruption in the public service.

Data from INAV indicate that there are about 230,000 registered drivers in the country. 92 per cent of these drivers had exchanged their old driving licences for the biometric document by January.

Initially, the government had fixed the end of December 2010 as the cut off date for exchanging the driving licences. However, the deadline has been extended for an indeterminate period.

The new licence contains security elements such as fingerprints, a photograph of the bearer, and various personal details. The driving licences are computerised, so that all the details of every registered driver should be on a centralised data base.

The idea that biometric documents cannot be forged is clearly a myth. Earlier this month the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), warned of significant corruption in the issuing of biometric identity cards and passports.

According to CIP, foreigners are bribing immigration officials to obtain the biometric identity documents. The CIP study estimated that corrupt staff in the civil identification directorate are making a minimum of 50,000 US dollars a month by selling the documents to foreigners – notably to Portuguese, Pakistanis and Somalis.

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