A major disruption has affected Belize’s national Motor Vehicle Registration and License System, leaving many motorists unable to obtain or renew their driver’s licenses. The system, developed with support from the Taiwanese Embassy, has been down for an extended period, impacting services at most Transport Department offices across the country, except in San Pedro Town, which operates a separate, locally managed system that continues to function normally.
The national system was created to centralize and digitize driver and vehicle records, with the aim of streamlining processes and modernizing the country’s transport administration. However, its downtime has caused significant frustration among citizens and raised concerns about administrative efficiency and the reliability of the government’s digital infrastructure.
San Pedro Town has remained unaffected due to its independent licensing infrastructure. Local authorities continue to issue licenses without interruption. One employee at the San Pedro Town Council, who requested anonymity, explained, “Our system is different; we are able to print without issues. Of course, people have to wait the seven days. We are in the process of printing right now.”
In an interview with the media on May 21st, the new CEO of the Ministry of Transport, Chester Williams, provided further context. “The system you spoke about is a system that is needed to input data and print a driver’s license for the national transport. I was notified about a week and a half ago by the Chief Transport Officer that the system has gone down. The reason being that there seems to have been some fees that were supposed to be paid to the developers of the program who are from Taiwan and that fee was not paid. The non-payment of the fee is not attributed to the government, the money is in a special bank account for the fee to have been paid but somehow, the ministry dropped the ball and the fee was not paid so what we will be doing now to rectify that issue, tomorrow morning I’ll be meeting with the Taiwanese Embassy in Belize City to see if they’ll be able to assist us in getting in contact with the developers of the program and the reason for that is because we want to begin to make payment of the outstanding fee and two to see if we can get them to bring the system back on stream.
The system is important and while some might say why not go and develop a new system, the importance of this system is that it will not only work for the national transport but what we want to do is to create a system where the national transport and the municipal traffic will be able to communicate with each other. Whatever license would have been issued by the local traffic, we want the national traffic to be able to see that and vice versa so having that connectivity between the different traffic departments and the national transport is important for us as we navigate the whole issue of road safety in this country.”
He continued. “In the time being, we’re only issuing the receipts for the driver’s licenses, which is not good. So, people who are now renewing their driver’s license do not get a physical license, they only get a receipt and whenever they arrive at any checkpoint, they will have to produce the receipt to show that they have paid for the renewal. Again, we are asking the police as well as our traffic personnel and the municipal traffic to be able to honor the receipt for now until we can get the system back up and running to provide the physical driver’s license to those persons.”
The ongoing disruption has also sparked calls for improved contingency planning and stronger support for Belize’s digital infrastructure.
