By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The introduction of a new smart card driving licence by the Department of Transport has been delayed until next year.
Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula confirmed this week the plan to introduce a new driving licence card will be submitted to the cabinet for approval early in the new year.
“Once that is done, then we will announce it to the public,” he said at an event where he released the preliminary festive season road fatality statistics.
Mbalula confirmed in May after delivering his budget vote speech that the Department of Transport (DoT) was looking at launching and rolling out a new driving licence card before the end of this year.
DoT Director-General Alec Moemi said after Mbalula’s budget vote speech that the department was hoping the whole process to introduce the new driver’s licence card would be approved by cabinet by the end of June 2021.
“The rollout plan could then commence soon thereafter and the first of these cards could be produced before the year-end of this year,” he said.
Moemi said in May that the new card must meet the standard of the International Organisation for Standardisation.
He said in terms of the standards that have been agreed globally, the DoT has to move to a plastic card like the new identity document card that is issued by the Department of Home Affairs.
Mbalula also expanded this week on plans he announced in August to streamline the driving licence renewal process for motorists, to reduce the backlog after reporting that nationally 42.4% or 1.2 million licences have not yet been renewed out of a total of 2.8 million licences that have expired since March 26, 2020.
The measures included increasing capacity by opening two Driving Licence Test Centres (DLTCs) operated by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) – one at Waterfall Park in Midrand, and the other at Eco Park in Centurion – on October 1.
These centres were to operate seven days a week from 7am until 9pm, add 35 380 renewal slots per month and increase Gauteng capacity for renewal slots by 48%.
Automobile Association (AA) spokesperson Layton Beard said that the driving licence card system is broken and needs to be fixed first before the introduction of a new driver’s licence card is considered.
Beard said the more pressing and urgent need is fixing the system so that the process allows the actual delivery of cards.