Transport Ministry's service quality low: Audit Report

Public services at the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation are significantly slow, leading to low quality and public dissatisfaction, the 2021-2022 Audit Report of the Ministry released by the Auditor General's Office states.

The audit report covers services from the ministry provided between September 2021 and August 2022.

Some of the issues noted in the report include control issues in the system used for registration of sea vessels, and misuse of this system. The report said that this creates risk of vessels being registered against regulations.

The report states that due to multiple integrated systems being used in service provision, the amount of work that needs to done outside of the system or manually increases, leading to delays in service provision.

Issues that have persisted for years remain unaddressed through efforts to modernise the systems, it says. The 'TAVIS' system designed for sea vessel registration remains unused, as well as SIMS systems created to integrate all the systems was not used, and failed to provide a solution, the report reads.

Furthermore, there was no solid procedure in place to oversee the ministry's IT system, nor was there a long-term plan to strengthen the office's IT system.

Statistics published by the Audit Office indicate that on average, 25,347 applications for registration of land vehicles, 49 percent, faced delays compared to the service chart published in 2022, while 6,587 sea vessel registration applications, 43 percent, faced delays.

The report noted that there is wide public dissatisfaction regarding the service levels of the Transport Ministry. Although complaints can be submitted via phone calls and emails, there is no procedure for the operation of the call centre. It is also unclear whether solutions were provided to complaints submitted via email.

In relation to employee affairs, the audit report states that responsibilities of individual staff members had been changed without prior notice, nor were training programs held to build staff capacity.

The Auditor General's Office has provided advice on how to improve services to the Transport Ministry. This includes drafting a long term plan to strengthen the ministry's IT system, and addressing challenges in providing prompt services through setting up systems.

The Auditor General advised that the system should hold a record of staff members who input any changes, as well as to offer access to the systems based on employee responsibilities.

System logs should be reviewed regularly and monitored, the Auditor General advised.