Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula has extended the deadline for motorists to renew their drivers’ licences following several calls to take action to solve the backlog of more than one million expired licences.
Mbalula on Thursday published an extension to the validity period of learners’ licences, driving licence cards, temporary driving licences, and professional driving licences that expired between March 26, 2020 and March 31, 2022. The amendment, which was published in Government Gazette 46143 on Thursday, extends the validity of licences to April 15.
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), which was at the forefront of the call for Mbalula to extend drivers’ licence validity, has now called on him to use this time to arrange a long-term solution to the licence cards problem.
“We are pleased the minister has changed his mind and heeded the call from civil society to provide an extension,” Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage said.
Outa has repeatedly called for Mbalula to extend the deadline and provide a permanent solution by extending the validity of driving licence cards from five years to 10 years.
“We believe that two weeks may not be enough, but it will help alleviate pressure and reduce the number of applications for licence renewals in the system. We urge the minister to engage with civil society and other stakeholders to address the impediments and design flaws that still exist within the online booking system,” Duvenage said
“We furthermore urge the minister to make a decision on increasing the driver’s licence validity period from five to 10 years, which is common international practice, and will go a long way to improving efficiency within government. The public should not have to go through this renewal process every five years.”
Outa urged motorists to keep all documentation and evidence of applications to renew their driving licence cards and, where they have been unable to apply due to system failures, to document this in order to protect themselves.
The extension includes not only the group who were previously granted an extension (those whose licences expired from March 26, 2020 to August 31, 2021), but also those whose licences expired after that, who were also caught up in the departmental inability to process licence applications and renewals.
Outa said the problems facing motorists were due to incompetence, mismanagement and corruption in the Department of Transport.
He added that the South African Insurance Association (SAIA) had told Outa that insurers would not automatically reject claims where a licence had expired for reasons beyond their control, such as the backlogs in processing licences. However, a claim might be denied, for example, if the licence card had expired five years ago and no plausible reasons could be provided for not renewing it.
