Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula on Friday stated that a new licence card has been approved and will be issued in November 2023.
He said the current driving licence card was introduced in 1998 and the production equipment was procured in the same year, making technology obsolete.
Mbalula said the new cards will have more secure design features and will comply with the international driving licence standards.
“The current cards will continue to be recognised as valid licence cards until 31 March 2029. Old cards will be decommissioned on the 1st of April 2024 but there will be a five-year period to allow old cards to expire.”
The minister was giving an update on the driver’s licence backlog, stating that a sizeable number of motorists, 1.2 million in total, are waiting to renew their licences.
“Data shows that 67% of people between the ages of 25-50 are driving without their new licences, 15% of them are aged between 50 and 60, and the remainder is over 60 years old,” said the minister.
He said that in excess of 2 million cards have been produced.
“Not only have we been able to reduce the turn-around time for our card production to pre-Covid-19 levels, we have now improved on those level. We remain concerned at the high number of people who have yet to come forward to renew their expired driving licences, whose number currently stands at 1.2 million. We are introducing a smart enrollment solution to improve the service to motorists and reduce turn-around times at driving licence testing centres (DLTCs). This solution has been successfully piloted at the Waterfall and Eco-Park Centurion DLTCs, and the Gauteng Province will be the first to go live in March 2023, before the full deployment to other provinces.”
He also touched on e-tolls, saying the issue would be dealt with in October.
“We’ll make the big announcement…just hold on…we are there with the decision about the e-tolls,” he said.
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