The National Insurance Commission (NIC), has procured about thousand hand-held mobile devices to help the police to check the authenticity of motor insurance stickers of motorists, Commissioner, Justice Yaw Ofori, has said.

Known as Gota phones, he said, the devices were currently being configured with the necessary security features to aid the police in detecting the validity of motor insurance policies.

The Commissioner of Insurance, who stated this in a press statement, said the move formed part of measures to enforce compliance with the Motor Insurance Database (MID) and root out fake insurance policies from the system.

The MID, introduced by NIC in January this year, is an electronic database of recording and checking vehicle insurance stickers to protect the interest of policy holders and the general public.

Mr Ofori explained that the MID was to check the authenticity of vehicular insurance and root out fake insurance stickers from the system to protect motorists, passengers and pedestrians, adding it was to protect motorists from buying fake insurance.

“The benefits of the MID include the authentication of the insurance of vehicles plying the roads, thereby securing the protection of policyholders, motorists, road users as well as other third parties who may suffer from the negligence of motorists,” he said.

Mr Ofori indicated that so far about 554, 000 motor vehicle insurance policies had been captured on the MID.

He said all the old policies issued prior to January 2020 had been uploaded onto the database, and new electronic stickers would be issued upon renewal.

Mr Ofori explained that the NIC had completed a nationwide “Training of Trainers” programme on the MID for some 400 personnel of the MTTD.

The Commissioner hinted that NIC, together with the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, would soon commence a nationwide exercise to enforce the Motor Insurance Database (MID) demands.

The joint exercise, he said, was meant to clamp down on dealers and patrons of fake motor insurance, in a bid to reduce the number of uninsured vehicles in the country.

He explained that some unscrupulous individuals were dealing in fake insurance stickers and selling such insurance stickers to unsuspecting motorists.

This practice, Mr Ofori said, put the lives of commuters and pedestrians at risk because in the event of an accident, such individuals could not access insurance because the vehicle had fake insurance.