R1 billion blow for new driving licences in South Africa
The Department of Transport has revealed that it will cost an explosive R1 billion to procure three new driving licence card printers for South Africa.
Responding to RISE Mzansi in a parliamentary question this past week, Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy stated that the current driver’s licence production machines have reached the end of their lifespan, and that three new machines need to be procured.
Each machine costs over R334 million, she said, bringing the total cost to R1 billion.
South Africa has been on the hunt for a new driving licence card and machines to print them for several years, with the administration of the current cards effectively held hostage by a 26-year old printer that frequently breaks down.
For decades, South Africa has depended on a single printer for its driver’s licence card production needs. One card takes an average of 14 working days to complete.
This inefficient process, along with the printer’s advanced age, has led to frequent malfunctions and breakdowns—159 to be exact—resulting in a significant backlog of licence renewal applications, reaching a peak of 1.3 million between 2022 and 2023.
RISE Mzansi revealed that between 2019/20 and 2023/24 over R21 million was spent maintaining the current equipment, with R870,000 budgeted for the current financial year.
To tackle these challenges, a new, faster machine was issued for tender, which could produce multiple cards daily and improve the security features of the cards.
The plan was to decommission the old printer and license card by 31 March 2024. The old cards’ last expiry date would have been 31 March 2029.
Cabinet approved the production of a new driving license card for the country on 30 August 2022 – however, this hit various stumbling blocks, the latest of which has been calls to shut down the entire tender process and start again.
This is due to questions around the fairness of the tender and alleged irregularities in appointing the preferred bidder. Creecy has called on the Auditor-General of South Africa to investigate the process.
Under the previous administraton the department said it was at the “tail-end” of the process of procuring a new printing machine for the cards from France, which would be printing hundreds of new licences before the end of April (2024).
However, this never materialised, with the preferred bidder only appointed in September.
This raised serious questions from civil group Outa, who claimed that the bidding process had been interefered with and manipulated.
Creecy ultimately listened to the calls for investigations and requested the Auditor-General—who is undertaking an audit of the procurement process for the new driving license card—to widen the scope of the audit process and include an investigation into key issues.
These issues include whether supply chain management prescripts were followed to the letter; whether the specs for the project included adequate measures to protect the safety of personal data; and whether the bid chosen was the most affordable option, and why other service providers were not selected.
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