What South Africa’s only driving licence card machine looks like
Transport minister Fikile Mbalula has announced that South Africa’s only driving licence card printer is fixed and revealed what it looks like.
Mbalula said he visited staff at the Driver’s Licence Card Account (DLCA) division of the Department of Transport (DoT) on Tuesday, 25 January 2022, and found the licencing card machine was repaired and in operation.
“The staff is pulling day and night shifts to ensure your licences are made and delivered,” the minister stated.
His visit comes after he said he would show South Africans the machine last Wednesday, but this never happened.
The department also published a video and photos of the machine, which appeared big enough to fill a large room.
DLCA employee next to the driver’s licence card printer
The 20-year-old machine broke down in early November following a power surge due to the flooding of a building adjacent to the government’s printing works.
On 12 January 2021, the minister revealed the machine was sent back to Germany for repairs.
Its near three-month-long unavailability has worsened a severe backlog of licence card renewals, exacerbated by the closure of Driver’s Licence Testing Centres (DLTCs) due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nearly 400,000 more licence cards were added to the backlog less than a month after the machine broke down. This number is expected to have grown to well over half a million.
It does not include the licence card renewals that were delayed well before its breakdown.
Mbalula has blamed these earlier delays on outdated systems and corruption.
He also promised he would announce several measures to ease the backlog, particularly regarding the issuing of temporary licence permits, but these have not been forthcoming.
A screenshot from the DoT’s video showing Mbalula next to the machine, holding a batch of newly-printed driver’s licence cards
The Democratic Alliance previously questioned why there was no backup machine to provide redundancy in case of a breakdown.
The transport department claimed that printing driver’s licence cards were centralised to prevent corruption.
But the machine’s age has been a point of concern for several years.
Mbalula has refused to take responsibility for the issue, claiming the problems began before his tenure as minister.
However, civil action group Outa has pointed out he signed off on a DLCA report in March 2021 which said the machine urgently needed to be replaced.
Mbalula has promised South Africa a new type of driver’s licence card aligned with international standards.
The card and its associated tender are currently awaiting approval from Cabinet.
It will be printed using new machines, but it’s not clear whether the government intends to use more than one this time around.
Below are more images showing various parts of the driver’s licence card printer in the video published by the DoT.
Loading ...