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GH¢3000 for number plate

 

Has the number plate of a vehicle ever put a smile on your face? Have you felt like smashing the vehicle when you read what was on the number plate? Or has it set you thinking of owning a vehicle to customise it?

Vanity, personalised or customised number plates have been in vogue for a long time and is mostly considered as a status symbol for the ‘rich and famous’.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) has since 2009 to date registered 946 customised number plates nationwide.

Giving the breakdown, the Public Relations Manager of the DVLA, Mr Kwaku Darko Aferi, said in 2009, the authority registered 330 but this reduced to 150 vehicles in 2010.

In the year 2011 a record low of 85 vehicles were registered. The number increased to 158 in 2012 while in 2013 a total of 223 vehicles were registered.

Mr Aferi said technically, the DVLA refers to customised plates as ‘Vehicles with Particular Identification Marks’.

What is vanity plate?

A vanity, personalised or customised plate is a special type of vehicle registration plate on an automobile or other vehicle. The owner of the vehicle usually pays extra amount of money to have his or her own choice of numbers or letters, usually forming a recognisable phrase, slogan, name or abbreviation on the plate.

According to an expert in automobile, Mr Terrence Atta-Sonno, depending on how the plates are easy to read and decipher, the message captured on a vanity plate could either make the observer smile, frown, shake their heads or give the thumbs-up, depending on the degree of agreement with the message they see.

Process

According to the Deputy Director of Vehicle Inspection and Registration, Alhaji Iddrisu Huseini, the process of acquiring a personalised number plate is as simple as that of acquiring normal vehicle registration.

The only difference, however, is that one must put in an application specifying what he or she wants for a customised number plate.

He said whatever name or phrase that one chooses to put on the number plate must be decent and not offensive.

He stated for instance that if one decides to use “cocaine” as a number plate, it may sound quite offensive to others.

He mentioned that the number of characters for a personalised number plate must not be more than six.

Alhaji Huseini said the customised number plate is for one car only and not transferable. For instance if you have a customised number plate for ‘Car A’, you cannot transfer it to ‘Car B’.

Additionally, he said if one decides to sell a car that has a customised number plate, he or she would have to write to the DVLA to withdraw that number plate and then the new owner decides the type of number plate to use.

Vanity plate – a preserve of the rich?

It costs GH¢3,000 for a personalised number plate. This amount excludes the registration fee of the vehicle, which also varies depending on the type of car.

Validation of vehicles

Mr Aferi said as of now, vehicle registration numbers, once issued, are for permanent usage and vehicle owners do not have to renew them.

However, he said with the passage of the Road Traffic Regulations L. I. 2180, all vehicle owners are enjoined by law to validate their vehicle registration numbers on annual basis before being allowed to use them.

He said the DVLA was working round the clock to digitise its records before implementing this particular provision in the L.I.

“This will ensure that information is easily available, at the click of a button in all DVLA offices around the country so that such validation could be done without undue pressure on vehicle owners who would otherwise have to travel long distances for the validation process,” he said. 

Who is who

Highlife musician, Amakye Dede has ‘SERIOUS 1 - 11’ embossed on the number plate of his black Ranger Rover Sport and he says “Serious is my stage name that is the only reason why I customised my car by that name and people easily recognise me by the car.”

However, he observed that this sometimes causes people to trespass on his privacy, since he may sometimes want to be at places unnoticed.

“There is nothing much I can do so when I really want my privacy I use a car with a normal registration number or board a taxi or trotro but interestingly people still recognise me. It is fun to be in commercial vehicles. It reminds me of where I came from,” he said.

Black Stars Captain, Asamoah Gyan, has customised his number plate as ‘Baby Jet 3’ while actress Jackie Appiah’s number plate reads ‘Jackie’.

Tottenham player, Emmanuel Adebayor, has his initials SEA (Sheyi Emmanuel Adebayor) on most of his cars while former Black Stars player, John Paintsil, has JP on his number plate.

The MP for Assin Central, Mr Kennedy Agyapong, has his Rolls Royce registered ‘KEN 50-10’ and the Chief Imam has ‘IMAM 1’.

 

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