THE Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) says more than 60 per cent fake drivers’ licences are in circulation in Cross River State.

The Sector Commander, Igwe Ikechukwu who made the disclosure yesterday when he paid a courtesy visit to the State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), said the documents were issued by touts operating in the state.

“I have discovered that about 60 per cent of drivers’ licences in this state are fake and produced by touts. They are not in our database. During last week’s enlightenment campaign with tanker drivers, out of more than 70 licences checked, it was discovered that more than 50 were fake,” Ikechukwu revealed.

The FRSC chief said the public could verify the authenticity or otherwise of the document via their handsets.

He added: “One could use his handset to know the status of his licence. What such a person should do is to open his message box, then type ‘NDL’, give space, then type ‘STATUS’, another space and type the number on the licence, then send it to 33811”.

He noted that in a little while, a message like, ‘this licence was issued on…’ would appear on the screen to authenticate or another message like, ‘not in the system’ which denotes that the document is fake.

The Sector Commander cautioned motorists against touting where the hard copy of their passport-size photographs for the exercise may be demanded, stressing that “every driver’s licence owner must be captured by the FRSC machine at the Board of Internal Revenue office.”

He further explained that most of the number plates and proofs of ownership of vehicles were not captured in their database, as most of the them were handwritten, noting that “proof of ownership should be generated from our system. Once proof of ownership is handwritten, it is not genuine too. We will soon embark on an exercise to check every proof of ownership of vehicles operating in Cross River, ” Ikechukwu stated.

On his part, the NUJ Chairman, Pastor Ndoma Akpet said the media would always partner with the commission to create awareness on how motorists could reduce auto-crash to the barest minimum since, according to him, “road safety duties are 70 per cent enlightenment.”