By Hajira Khota

South African motorists are in for more problems when it comes to renewing their driver’s licenses.

This comes after “the ailing card production machine” that makes driving license cards has been down since November 24, resulting in no new driving license cards being manufactured for the past three weeks.

This could force the Department of Transportation to extend the validity of expired driver’s licenses issued during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns once more.

The Automobile Association (AA) and the Organization Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) both stated on Tuesday that they feel a further extension of the validity of driver’s licenses is require

Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage spoke to Radio Islam International; he said it’s “sad” that motorists haven’t been warned of the situation, and that it’s “wrong and unreasonable” to expect motorists who applied for a driver’s license renewal in a timely manner to be forced to pay for a temporary license.

“If we had a customer-centric department, we would have made an announcement telling people what was going on if it hadn’t been corrected in the first couple of days and they realized it was going to take longer”.

The failure of the equipment, according to Duvenage, could result in the validity of expired driver’s licenses being extended longer, adding to the backlog at the Driving Licence Test Centre.

When the machine broke down in January 2020, the Department of Transport was given advance notice of the malfunction, resulting in a reported backlog of at least 124 000 driving license cards across the country.

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