The business of selling second-hand vehicles is almost grinding to a halt following the freezing of logbook transfers on the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) online portal.

This follows the decision by NTSA to start the process of transferring its car registration and transfer services to the eCitizen platform following a directive from President William Ruto.

In December, NTSA started migrating its services from its Transport Integrated Management System (Tims) to eCitizen to centralize access and payments for varied government services.

The move, which was intended to take a week, was meant to revolutionize the delivery of services for motor vehicle owners and various stakeholders who work with the NTSA.

However, the process has been ongoing for over a month and has rendered second-hand car dealers unable to register or transfer vehicle ownership threatening their businesses.

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The processing of payments from financial institutions for vehicle purchases through asset financing and acquisition of car loans have also stalled due to the sluggish the switchover.

Used car dealers are lamenting that they are unable to use the platform to change car ownership since the migration, given more than 80 per cent of car purchases are through financing.

They are accusing NTSA of maintaining silence on the problem leaving them with no way forward on how to transfer logbooks to be able to unlock payments by financial institutions.

SACCO and bank members who are using their vehicle logbooks as collateral to access loans to resolve financial challenges have also been left with no reprieve amid a high cost of living.

NTSA, which is headed by Director General George Njao, is yet to make public just how long the migration is meant to last after the agency indicated that it would take only a few days.

The government last year gave all state departments and agencies until December 31, 2023 to all migrate their services and payments to the eCitizen to seal all possible revenue leaks.

It currently costs one between Sh2,210 to transfer the logbook of a second-hand vehicle with an engine capacity of 1,000cc and below and Sh6,465 for one of 3,000cc and above.