Acute shortage of physical number plates continues to haunt container freight stations (CFS) countrywide with the majority of stations now facing huge backlogs as a result of uncollected cars.

Container Freight Station (CFS) association CEO Daniel Nzeki said thousands of  imported cars have remained uncollected by owners due to lack of physical number plates.

“Physically we are at series KDD-K, but the actual number plate series has reached KDD-S,  meaning that we have about 8,000 cars that do not have number plates, this is causing a lot of pain, especially to buyers who are forced to wait long and also incurs more charges for storage,” he said.

The official is now calling on National Transport and Safety Authority NTSA to privatise the number plate production because the current production could not meet the supply.

Currently car number plates are produced at Kamiti Maximum prison.

“They should just look for ways of production because this kind of production does not meet the demand.

The demand is so huge and production is less, this is not how business works, they have to do something,” said Nzeki. Nzeki said the demand will be met if production is beefed up.

 Peak season

NTSA through a letter dated August 4, signed by Eva Nywawira acknowledged that there was a delay in the production that has resulted into a crisis.

“As an authority we have tried our best to ensure that the number plates are available at the CFSs on time, there has been a small delay in plates distribution at the CFSs.

This has been aggravated by  the fact that it is a peak season for the importers and dealers,” reads the letter seen by Business Hub.

Nzeki said: “It’s on that strength NTSA wrote to Kenya Revenue Authority demanding a solution, when you have vehicles which are not moving, definitely space is becoming a challenge,” said Nzeki.

He said the matter has not been resolved and has caused a lot of pain to sector players.

Container Freight Station is a warehouse where cargo that belongs to various exporters or importers is consolidated or deconsolidated before being exported or imported.

“By last Monday we were looking at around 11,000 vehicles stranded that day, but the number has slightly decreased,” said Nzeki.