With the August 31 deadline for the renewal of driving licences less than a week away, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has called on the Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula, to extend the deadline for licences that expired between March 26 and December 31, 2020.
“Government seems to be unmoved by the plight of thousands of motorists who have been battling to renew their driving licences,” says Outa. “These motorists will be forced to disobey the law if government is unwilling to grant another extension to the deadline for renewal.”
The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) recently acknowledged that there was a significant backlog when it came to the renewal of driving licences.
Outa says it has received numerous complaints from motorists, highlighting the frustration encountered when attempting to renew a driving licence. Frustrations with the licence renewal system have been around for a couple of years now – especially in Gauteng – and existed before the Covid-19 pandemic, although the pandemic certainly exacerbated the problem.
“While government has blamed the pandemic for the inefficiencies in the renewal process as well as motorists not renewing in time, the real underlying problems of administrative inefficiencies existed prior to the pandemic,” says Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage. “This includes an ineffective online booking system, broken eye testing and fingerprinting machines, and corruption. This was made worse by Covid-19 lockdowns and reduced capacity in driver licence testing centres due to Covid-19 restrictions.”
He adds that motorists cannot take the blame for gross inefficiencies that should have been addressed by the Department of Transport a long time ago.
“Outa believes that the current driving licence problem is an extension of the Department of Transport’s inability to get on top of a myriad of administrative and other issues relating to the motoring public, including the defunct e-toll scheme, the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act (Aarto), the inaccurate eNaTIS vehicle registry system, unroadworthy vehicles, high road fatalities, and the Road Accident Fund debacle.”
