The Roads Department proposes to introduce a new system for issuing and managing driving licences this year.
This is to try and curb a proliferation of fake licences and the custom of people acquiring different licences in different parts of the nation.
Nguyen Van Quyen, deputy director of the department said the technology for printing licences was 15-years old, making it easy for counterfeiters to issue fakes.
Under the new system, licences will be printed using biometrics technology. This will enable distinguishing features, such as fingerprints, to personalise the input information on each driver.
The information would be stored on bar magnetic codes on the licences, which would be printed on high quality, durable plastic.
Issuing and managing licences will be done electronically to ensure accuracy and security. Each driver will be allowed to use only one valid driving licence. At present, some drivers manage to acquire different licences in different regions because of a lack of central control.
Quyen said apart from restricting licences to one and making it difficult to produce fakes, the new process would enable Viet Nam keep in line with practices in other ASEAN countries.
Tran Son, deputy head of Traffic Accidents Investigation and Instruction Unit under the department, said that every month, hundreds of fake licences were discovered - and revoked under the Roads Department.
Last year, a total of more than 1,600 fake ones were confiscated.
Police departments in HCM City and southern Binh Duong Province recently apprehended a counterfeit ring making and selling hundreds of fake car driving licences after drivers confessed when apprehended.
Lieutenant-colonel Nguyen Dang Linh said counterfeiters were often detected this way. He said not all policemen could tell the difference between fakes and the real thing.
Hoang Quang Ngoc, director of Ha Noi’s Hoang Hai Transport Company, said many drivers used two or three fake licences and a real one so that they could walk away from many traffic violations.
Under the present law, car and motorbike drivers who have their licences marked by policemen three times, lose the right to drive and have to take another driving test to get a new one.
Tran Dinh Thang, deputy head of Chuong My District’s Police Unit, said under the new management system, the database would provide exact times of traffic violations made by a driver.
This would prevent them from taking advantage of fake licences.
Source: VNS
