Owners of vehicles registered before 2023 will have to pay GH¢25 to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) for their records to be updated digitally, the Director of Driver Training, Testing, and Licensing at the DVLA, Prosper Kafui Semevo has announced.

Addressing a press conference in Accra on Tuesday [Jan 13, 2026], he said the onboarding process was meant to verify the ownership of manually registered vehicles and also block uncustomed vehicles from the system.

Mr Semevo explained that the onboarding process would require customers to personally visit DVLA offices and other designated centers with their vehicles, registration documents, custom declaration forms, and Ghana card for their bio data to be verified.

He has therefore urged vehicle owners who are yet to be onboarded onto its digital platform to do so to be able to obtain a title certificate and electronic registration card, which would be a requirement when the new licence plate policy is rolled out.

He said customers would pay GH¢25 for the verification of their biodata.

"We encourage all customers to try and visit our offices to be onboarded. If you do not onboard, you can not obtain a title certificate and electronic card when the new licence plate policy starts, and this means that you can not register your vehicle.

"Again, if you fail to do it, you will be violating the road traffic law, and you will be dealt with by the law."

Mr Semevo, however, said vehicles that were registered between January 2022 and December, 2023 would not be onboarded yet, "so the owners of those vehicles should wait until they are asked to do so."

Last week the Director of Corporate Affairs at the DVLA, Stephen Attuh in an interview with Graphic Online explained that as part of the planned rollout of new vehicle license plates in 2026, the authority has decided that owners of all vehicles registered in Ghana before 2023 are to ensure that their details are migrated from the DVLA manual system to the authority's digital platform.

Vehicle owners are therefore required to visit any DVLA office to ensure that their details are migrated onto the authority's digital platform as soon as possible. 

This will enable such vehicle owners to acquire the new number plates when the necessary Parliamentary processes are complete for the rollout of the new process.

He explained that because vehicles registered before 2023 were manually done, the owners would have to be onboarded on the authority's digital platform as a matter of necessity.

"Customers whose vehicles fall under this category need to visit any of our offices across the country to ensure that their manual registration files are migrated to the digital platform before we finally roll out the new licence plate system," he said.

Mr Attuh stressed that vehicles that were not onboarded on the digital platform would not be able to acquire the new licence plate when the parliamentary processes were eventually completed for the initiative to take off.

Last year, the DVLA announced the introduction of new licence plates in 2026, which was expected to begin in January. The new system is to incorporate Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) embedded to allow for traceability.

However, on December 24, 2025, the DVLA Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Julius Neequaye Kotey, announced that the implementation of the policy had been suspended pending approval of the new process by Parliament.

He explained that the suspension of the policy became necessary because a proposed amendment to the Road Traffic Regulation, 2012 (L.I. 2180), which specifies the contents and format of vehicle number plates in the country, was still before Parliament and had not yet been approved.