Mass vaccination a cure for long queues
Long queues at all traffic stations will soon be a thing of the past.
This was a promise made by the MEC for community safety, security and liaison MEC, Vusi Shongwe, during his visit to the Mbombela Traffic Station last Thursday.
He said he understood the communities’ frustrations, but put the blame squarely on Covid-19’s shoulders.
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“I really feel for the people, however, we must understand that there are long queues because of Covid-19. There is a limited number of people permitted inside to be serviced and so the rest are forced to stand in line outside. I just want to urge everyone to bear with our officials at these centres while we battle the spread of virus,” he appealed.
Shongwe encouraged people to consider getting the vaccine as it is the only solution to cutting down long queues. “I strongly believe that if we can all go and get vaccinated things go back to normal,” he stressed.
“However, as a department we will not tolerate laziness from any of our officials working at our traffic centres. I would like to implore them to put our communities first,” added Shongwe.
He visited this centre to renew his driver’s licence. He encouraged other motorists to take advantage of the extension period.
The grace or extension period for driver licence renewals in South Africa was recently announcement by the transport minister, Fikile Mbalula, which came as a relief to many.
Mbalula said drivers across the country had faced a number of challenges to apply for their licence renewals due to the pandemic. While the deadline had been extended a number of times over the past year, Mbalula said 1.2 million licences had not yet been renewed out of a total of 2.8 million expired ones – equivalent to a 42% nonrenewal rate.
He said driver licence testing centres were facing massive capacity problems, which has worsened long queues. Problems with offline systems and faulty equipment have also led to delays.
