Cape Town - The driving license card machine is back after maintenance and in full production, the national transport department said.
Last month, the department released a statement stating the licence card machine was taken out of production for three weeks in order to conduct routine maintenance.
A broken part of the machine had to be replaced.
“The testing of the machine after the part replacement took another two weeks before it was certified to go back to full production,” National Department of Transport spokesperson, Collen Msibi, said.
“This will see an increase in production from the 60,000 cards produced over the past three weeks during the testing period to about 120,000 cards per week. The machine has printed an average 2,850,000 cards were annum in the past two financial years,” Msibi said.
“Since its commissioning in 1998, it has printed over 60 million driving license cards.”
There is currently a backlog in South Africa when it comes to driver’s license cards.
The department confirmed there is currently a 350,000 card backlog for the past five weeks.
It said backlogs were dependent on the number of orders received, however, there was currently a catch-up plan in the pipelines to address this backlog which is expected to be cleared by August.
“The department is currently working on the process to introduce a new driving license card as approved by Cabinet in August 2022. The new card will be launched before the end of the current financial year,” Msibi said.
“It will also bring with it new card production machines to replace the current machine. This signals the new dawn in the driver’s licence card environment.”
robin.francke@inl.co.za
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