BLA still dealing with backlog

The Barbados Licensing Authority (BLA) continues to address a growing backlog in vehicle registrations and inspections following the rollout of a new system in November last year, Minister of Transport, Works and Maintenance, Santia Bradshaw has confirmed. 

The introduction of the new platform was triggered by a severe failure of the Authority’s legacy registration system on October 20, which knocked the platform offline and halted vehicle services for nearly a week, prompting the phased resumption of inspections and certificate issuance while testing continued. 

Reports at the time noted that staff was using a temporary manual process alongside the new digital platform to manage critical services and begin work on a mounting backlog of pending inspections and registrations.

“We have been having some challenges with the IT systems and we are working with our external consultants to be able to rectify the challenges that we are having,” Bradshaw said during a weekend visit to the Authority’s Pine, St Michael headquarters.

“That new system requires our staff to pretty much train on the new system.”

Bradshaw acknowledged that customers with existing vehicles experienced particular difficulties. 

“We had a number of people who were complaining, especially persons who already had an existing vehicle… they couldn’t get the registrations done because the system was down and we could not pull up the information from their old registration,” she outlined.

To accelerate backlog reduction, the Authority has engaged additional staff and invited former employees to assist with customer service and data entry. 

“We also reached out to some retired licensing officers who would have been familiar with the operations of licensing but who are willing to be able to train on the existing system,” Bradshaw said, adding that weekend and after-hour training sessions had been arranged to minimise disruption during peak service periods.

Bradshaw stressed the importance of accuracy in transferring personal data. 

“In this system you have to enter the information manually to be able to transfer that information… it’s important that that information is entered correctly as well,” she maintained.

In addition to staffing measures, Bradshaw said the Ministry’s IT team and the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Smart Technology (MIST) have dedicated personnel to troubleshoot ongoing issues. 

“We’ve actually rebuilt the system and we have about four additional persons that have been working with us. MIST as well has brought staff… they are dedicating a team to licensing specifically to be able to troubleshoot a number of the issues here,” the minister said.

While no completion date has been announced, she said phased training and system improvements are expected to accelerate progress. 

“I think by next week we should be in a position to give you a status report as to where we really are,” Bradshaw said.

The phased restoration of services, including the issuing of vehicle inspections and roadworthy certificates, has been ongoing since the system disruption.

Several members of the public expressed frustration over the delays, with some waiting months to register vehicles while continuing to pay insurance on cars they cannot legally drive.