The critical shortage of face value forms, supplied by the national Government Printing Works (GPW) and used for issuing motor vehicle and driving licences, will have a ‘disastrous impact’ on South African citizens and the economy.
This is according to Ricardo Mackenzie’s open letter to Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga and Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi.
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Mackenzie, the Western Cape’s provincial minister of mobility, claims that if the forms were depleted and unable to be supplied to municipalities, it would halt the issuing of motor vehicle licence discs, vehicle registration certificates, temporary driving licences for emergencies, and learners’ licences.
While there have been attempts by the GPW to mitigate this problem, dispatching a few boxes and ‘working on a plan to clear all backorders’, it is simply not enough, says Mackenzie.
The Western Cape currently has a backlog of 750 boxes of forms that have not been supplied, which stems from orders that were placed on 7 July 2023 and 21 September 2023.
Before this, orders in the Western’s Cape system had to close since they were not fulfilled.
In addition, the number of forms supplied to the Cape’s various municipalities had to be ‘drastically’ reduced.
‘The City of Cape Town, with the highest demand, is now alarmingly close to the end of its stocks,’ said Mackenzie.
‘We have raised this issue repeatedly but are not getting a satisfactory response or a sense that there is an urgency to deal with a matter that is not complicated and can be resolved,’ he added.
On the same day that Mackenzie released his letter, Chikunga announced that the country would ‘receive new driver’s licence cards’ by the end of the month, as reported by TopAuto.
‘I can tell you now that before the end of [April], we will be printing new driving licences and will launch at least the first 100 per province,’ said Chikunga, in a media briefing regarding the shutdown of Gauteng’s e-tolls on 10 April.
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