There’s some good news for motorists after the Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula announced a further extension to the grace period for the renewal of driver’s licences.
According to Mbalula, learner’s licences, driving licence cards, temporary driving licences and professional driving permits that expire during the period that commenced from 26 March 2020 up to 31 August 2021, are deemed to be valid and their validity periods are extended for a further grace period ending on 31 March 2022.
Mbalula said the extension comes into effect from the date of publication of the Directions in the Government Gazette.
“Nationally, 1.2 million licences are not yet renewed out of a total of 2.8 million expired licences. This represents 42.4% non-renewal, with 57.6% of all expired licences having been renewed,” he said.
The previous extensions of the validity period were meant to enable an orderly clearing of the backlog, however, capacity challenges put tremendous pressure on Driving Licence Testing Centres (DLTC) in processing renewals of driving licences.
Also read: Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula extends grace period for renewal of driver’s licences
The backlogs at the DLTCs have also been contributing to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in restrictions that led to the closure of several DLTCs.
Mbalula further mentioned that faulty live capture units, as well as the faulty eye testing equipment, have resulted in long queues at DLTCs and there were delays in validating fingerprints as live capture units are not linked to Home Affairs’ real-time.
“There are many more challenges that have been brought to our attention, to which we are attending with the necessary urgency. Together with the MECs, we have been hard at work in addressing these challenges,” he adds.
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