The Western Cape’s minister of Transport and Public Works, Bonginkosi Madikizela, says he will soon publish a notice calling for public comments on new number plates for the province.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Thursday (7 November), Madikizela said that move is a pre-emptive one as the province was fast running out of the current ‘CAA’ and ‘CAW’ plate combinations.<\/p>\n
He said that the ‘CAG’ will replace ‘CAW’ for the greater George-area in the next 6-weeks, while the current ‘CAA’ plates for Cape Town are set to run out by January 2020.<\/p>\n
“Similar to the situation a few years ago in Gauteng, a new licence mark will soon be necessary for all vehicles in the province,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The proposed change to a provincial licence mark, will eliminate any further challenges relating to individual licence marks per registering authority.<\/p>\n
“The Department is considering the option to provide for a transition period of 5-years, during which the public will have to convert to the new system. Personalised WP licence numbers will not be affected by this new system.<\/p>\n
“As (of) 3 November 2019, 76,212 CAA-numbers have been allocated since its introduction on 13 April 2019.”<\/p>\n
The current CAA number plate system can only produce 99,999 plates.<\/p>\n
Speaking to BusinessTech, department spokesperson Jandr\u00e9 Bakker said that the gazette will likely be published for comment by the end of November 2019.<\/p>\n
While the new format has not officially been finalised, he said that the new proposed format will likely be\u00a0a combination of alpha and numeric characters followed by ‘WC’ at the end.<\/p>\n
He said that this new format would allow authorities room to produce a possible 16 million number plates, and is similar to the current plate formats used in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape.<\/p>\n
However, he reiterated that the format would still be subject to public comments once the gazette has been published.<\/p>\n