Warning about driving licence card tender in South Africa

South Africa’s minister of transport, Barbara Creecy, has been advised against cancelling the driving licence card tender awarded to Idemia, the City Press reports.

Creecy instructed the Department of Transport (DoT) to approach the High Court for a declaratory order to cancel the tender following the Auditor General of South Africa’s (AGSA) investigation.

However, the DoT’s chief director of legal services, Advocate Adam Masombuka, said cancelling the contract would result in an interdict and a protracted review legal process.

He says this route “can take years” as opposed to appointing the preferred bidder.

The legal opinion provided regarding the matter notes that concrete grounds need to be provided for cancelling the tender, and there were currently no material irregularities justifying such a move.

The legal opinion provided to Creecy said a material irregularity includes corruption, fronting, fraud, contravention of supply chain processes, and acts of impropriety and maladministration, among other things.

Under such circumstances, cancelling the contract would be encouraged.

Masombuka also noted that the decision to procure goods by an organ of state is an executive act, and the reversal of such a decision should be of the same nature, meaning that the executive authority should exercise it.

While the Auditor General’s investigation found numerous irregularities, none were material. In other words, it did not detect any fraud or corruption.

Instead, the irregularities involved an inadequate budget analysis conducted by the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA), failure to evaluate bids according to the specified criteria, and inconsistent application scoring during the evaluation process.

“All bids submitted exceeded that R486 million budget set by the DLCA, indicating inadequate market analysis and budgeting,” the AGSA said.

“The DLCA used outdated pre-Covid prices, and the budget they submitted to cabinet for approval did not include all the costs for the contract, leading to cabinet approving a memo that was not a true reflection of the cost of the contract.”

Idemia told MyBroadband that it legitimately and lawfully won the tender.

“The result of the audit carried out by the AGSA highlights irregularities that we take very seriously. While some of the findings pertain to matters beyond our scope, others directly concerning Idemia Smart Identity do not reflect the reality of our operations,” it said.

This would also not be the first time the tender would have been cancelled, having happened three times before.

However, a new printer is crucial as the current one is extremely old and prone to breakdowns. Creecy also suggested in an earlier interview that the printer broke down again earlier this year.

The current driving licence card printing machine has been in service for nearly three decades, and its tendency to break causes massive production backlogs.

Creecy’s predecessors promised for years that the transport department was close to finalising its plans to launch a new driving licence card and procure new printers for the country’s motorists.

Former transport minister Fikile Mbalula first confirmed the plan to launch a new driving licence card in early 2022. Later that year, the cabinet also approved it.

Mbalula’s announcements came after the government took flak for continuing to use one card printer to produce the entire country’s licence cards.

A two-month breakdown of the machine inflamed the criticism while the DLCA was already experiencing a backlog in card issuances due to the Covid-19 lockdown, corruption, and technical problems.

The laminated card itself is also outdated by international standards and has become a prime target for identity thieves and fraudsters, alongside the green ID book.

The proposed replacement polycarbonate card features a plethora of security improvements, including an embedded microchip.

The upgrades not only make the card more robust against forgery or fraudulent alteration but also make it more suitable for South Africans who wish to drive while travelling overseas.

The new licence card was supposed to begin testing in late 2023 and be fully rolled out by the end of March 2024. From April 2024, the DLCA would have stopped issuing the old licence cards.

However, these plans were substantially delayed due to repeated publishing and withdrawal of the tender and the AG’s investigation into its irregular evaluation process.

The department only announced five preferred bidders in June 2024 and appointed Idemia as the provider in August 2024.

It announced Idemia as the winner a month later, but only a few days thereafter, Creecy announced her instruction to the AG to widen the scope of its review in the card tender.

It remains to be seen whether Idemia will again bid to provide the machine and associated technologies needed to support the new licence cards if the High Court agrees with the department’s request to cancel the awarded tender.