Outa says Mbalula is trying to deflect driver’s licence chaos

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) said it believes transport minister Fikile Mbalula is trying to deflect the driver’s licence administration chaos onto the public, instead of taking ownership within the department.

Hundreds of thousands of motorists are still struggling to have their expired driving licence cards renewed.

The final deadline for the renewal of driver’s licences that expired during the lockdown period is 31 March.

Outa’s executive director Advocate Stefanie Fick has called on Mbalula to extend the deadline for all those who have expired licence cards, saying the chaos is an administrative problem.

Fick said Mbalula must also speed up the decision on whether to extend the validity period for the cards from five years to 10 years, or not.

“We strongly feel that a 10-year licence renewal period should apply to all driver’s licence cards in current circulation, meaning that all driver’s licence cards should have five years added onto the current expiry date.”

“If this were the case, then the 31 March expiry date becomes obsolete, and the country can move on without having to attend to the current mess unfolding.”

Mbalula said there is still a backlog of 534 000 driving licence cards waiting to be printed, and that there have been 3 641 transactions over the last 16 days.

Fick said while Mbalula indicated the backlog would be cleared in time, Outa is sceptical of the administration’s capacity to do this.

“Furthermore, Outa believes that there is an unknown number, believed to be hundreds of thousands of more motorists with expired licence cards, who have been unable to access the renewal system and will not meet the deadline of 31 March 2022, which applies to licence cards that expired between 26 March 2020 and 31 August 2021 during the pandemic lockdown period.”

In Gauteng, motorists have struggled to access the electronic system to book a slot to get their licences renewed, while the City of Tshwane on Wednesday announced it would resume operations at all of its driving licence testing centres (DLTCs) and motor vehicle registration offices after protests by driving schools.

Fick said in August last year, Mbalula said there were 2.8 million expired licence cards, with 1.2 million of them not renewed.

“There is no current update on the number of expired cards which have not gone through the renewal process.”

On Monday, during an oversight visit at the Akasia DLTC in Tshwane, Mbalula said the transport department wants to make acquiring driving licences accessible and as simple as possible.

ALSO READ: Licence renewal debacle drives home the pain of accessing state services